A few words from a California shut-in

Staying alive? Yep, that's what I'm trying to do. How about you?

Though sometimes I'm not sure exactly why.

I started this blog ten years ago when I was contemplating aging -- mine, and other people's. I was exploring what conscious aging would be, how to enjoy it, and how to inspire others not to give up and sink into their couches to watch whatever was on television, and develop arthritis, or worse yet, Alzheimer's. 

I was 66 years old, and at the time I was living in New Mexico, where death is part of the rough, desert landscape where nuclear weapons are buried and cow's skulls are sometimes placed above doorways. 

A few years later, I moved back to Sonoma County, the place I call home, where I had raised my kids in the little rural town of Occidental. Here, death is still in the closet, one of the things people don't like to talk about because it's too negative.

Now, like everyone who doesn't have an essential job, laid off from my part time work as a teacher of older adults in the local community college, I'm sheltering in place.

I've come back to this blog to share what that means to me as a member of the vulnerable generation that is also known as the boomers.

I've always been a writer. I have stacks of journals in my closet and pages from unfinished manuscripts about various topics as well as columns written for the local newspapers and published articles about the environment, feminism, and, most recently, organic farming.

I've been waiting for a time like this. Like many others, I spent the sixties envisioning a future without nuclear bombs, in which we would live in greater attunement with nature, a world of conscious awakening, love, and equality, all the good things we saw in a flash and fully expected to realize in our lifetimes. But gradually it became apparent that this transformation was going to take a long time. My daughter would say, and has often told me, it's not going to happen, mom.

Climate change loomed on the horizon, and our society seemed incapable of coping with it, just as we had failed to cope with nuclear bombs; and it became apparent that the existing order was going to have to unravel before a new age could take shape.

I thought a depression would be far better than a nuclear war. In 1999, Y2K looked promising. We were going to be forced to change. But that problem was solved, and instead we endured the life shattering experience of 9-11.

The world changed, but not in the direction we had imagined. The experience of the sixties and seventies had been too shocking for the establishment. A backlash followed, dominated by globalization, neoliberalism, and endless wars. Meanwhile, the climate deteriorated, and it became obvious that it was an emergency with a deadline: ten years to change our ways, or die.

Now we have something that threatens to bring about the economic collapse and the possible disruption of our culture.

A plague.

At first, I confess, I was happy about it.

I often think about the story of the exodus from Egypt celebrated every year around this time at Passover, how Moses was given the task of freeing the Jews from slavery, and how the Pharaoh resisted. So the Lord devastated Egypt with a succession of plagues. With each one, a despairing Pharaoh agreed to yield, but then God "hardened his heart" and Pharaoh changed his mind.  It took seven plagues for him to finally give in, and the Jews set forth on a forty-year expedition through the wilderness in search of the Promised Land.

They made it, but Moses died before they arrived.

I am Jewish but I'm not religious in any traditional sense. But that story speaks to me now, and I wonder whether this disaster, with so many sick and dying from an invisible microbe with remarkable ability to spread from person to person and no cure, will free the enslaved from bondage.

Will we wake up? And what does that mean? What do we have to do, to be released from the shackles of an ignorant society, a repressive government, a legacy of racial violence, and the rise of an extraordinary, modern Pharaoh in tight allegiance with the richest, most bigoted and self-centered class hell-bent, so it appears, to let the world fry?

I ask you. 

Yesterday, April 6, on KPFA's Letters and Politics, Mitch Jezerich interviewed Yanis Varoufakis, who served as Greece's Minister of Finance in 2015 and is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. In the last two minutes he asked the Leftist economist what he sees happening after the pandemic. Said Vourafakis, "Humanity is approaching a fork in the road. It is totally up to us which of the two we will follow.

"One track takes us to a dystopia, to a situation where the money that has been pumped...into the economy is allowed to turbo charge even further the inequities in our world, putting more money in the hands of a few who just sit on it, or buy more houses and more private jets while the rest are dwelling in precarity, not knowing what is going on but unable to make ends meet and understanding that the future of their children will be worse than their own...the Donald Trump route if you will; and another track in which humanity wakes up to the fact that we are all in this together, and reorganize the international monetary system to stop climate change and take care of all the people."

If it's up to us -- is it? -- time ran out before he could tell us what to do.

Tomorrow I will give you my dystopian version of what lies ahead. 

A dutiful daughter tells her story

Out of the blue, a writer sent me her book about her experience of taking over for her elderly mother when she became unable to cope with those “activities of daily living” (ADLs) we all take for granted…until we can’t. Part memoir, part handbook for other adult children, Nine Realities of Caring for an Elderly Parent jolted me into a sneak preview of what my end of life might be like.

With significant differences. 

Not all of us at this stage of life will be blessed with a devoted daughter like the author, Stefania Shaffer. Remarkably,  Shaffer zooms in to the task after being completely estranged from her mother, and misjudged by her, for years.  Suddenly offered an olive branch, she goes to visit, where she is confronted with a mother in a worn blue bathrobe going blind from macular degeneration and in the habit of falling, amidst the utter chaos and neglect of what had been her childhood home, a situation become so derelict that she will feel required to leave her own life and move back home to provide care.

Without blinking, without second thoughts, and with no resentment, she does it -- and she’s rewarded, by falling in love with the handsome roofer who comes to fix the roof.

It reads like a fairy tale; and maybe it is. A lot is left out of this halcyon story, and one suspects that those details that might fill out the story are left on the same shelf as the financial information she chooses to reference only obliquely, substituting “trees” for dollar amounts. But luckily at every stage there is money to do what needs to be done, from replacing the wall-to-wall carpets to hiring a full time hospice caregiver.

But even lacking those and other tender details of how their relationship was repaired and sustained during these difficult final years, the book manages to convey a lot of useful information set in a flowing and readable narrative.

Introducing her story, Shaffer outlines the growing need for care of older adults, the costs of professional care and the rising number of Americans (nearly ten million in 2011) trying to provide it themselves. Then she lists the qualities needed by the family caregiver:  “mobile enough to relocate or ability to provide extra bedroom and bath space, trustworthy, alert, non-drug user, non smoker, reliable, observant, savvy, organized, multi-tasker, patient, creative cook, dietitian, pharmacist, nurse, non-alarmist, soother, committed, non-traveler…” and more. 

It’s a hard bill to fill!

Even now, having read the whole thing and put it down for a week while attending to other projects, I, a 72-year-old reasonably healthy mother feel a shudder of fear as I take another look at this warm hearted, reasonable and capable depiction of an experience I hope I will never live to see. But who can know how it all may end? We try our best, faithfully taking the daily walk, going to swimming and yoga classes, eating as much fresh produce as the budget will allow… Trying to maintain some form of social life, staying mentally active, even holding a job… all the good things we see on NPT’s “Next Avenue” or AARP’s “Life Reimagined,” everything designed to counteract the negative images we carry about old age, and all to the good, but in the end, for most of us, there’s that lingering decline in which care is the ultimate concern – the person to care, and the money to provide for it. So many elders are lacking in one or both. The unwillingness or certainly reluctance of so many of our adult children to attend to the needs of aging parents, even before the situation attains this catastrophic level, though uncounted, appears to be fairly widespread; and with so many pressures and demands on their time, this lack of attention is not entirely surprising. The failure of many boomers to provide financially for their old age is another factor; they (I should say, we!) can’t provide properly for our own care, and, let’s face it, our children’s motivation is somewhat reduced by their awareness that they often cannot expect a significant reward for the enormous time and energy commitment that will be demanded of them.

All around, it’s a complex, daunting picture with no solution in sight. Reading about the wonderful devotion and skill of Stefania Shaffer, we can only pray that we may be blessed with something approximating the loving care her mother received – despite their estrangement – and that caregiving families generally will receive more support from government funded social programs than they are enjoying now. 

It’s a difficult road, but caring has its rewards for the giver, and those of us forced to depend on it can learn to be sweet, as Shaffer’s mother was, thanking Stefania every single day and always telling her how wonderful she was. In this “love affair of a different kind,” despite the labor and the stress, the intimacy of caregiving can be a gift to us in a society aching from isolation, loneliness, hopelessness and lack of purpose. Here at the difficult end of life, we may find the tenderness and meaning we crave.

Full-body C-Scans: not all they're cracked up to be

I was reading my new issue of Consumer Reports when I came across this very interesting item:

"Your doctor recommends a “whole-body” CT scan

"Those scans are often touted as a way to detect early signs of cancer and heart disease. But most scans—and up to 80 percent in older people—have at least one abnormality that shows up on the exam. Almost all of the abnormalities are harmless, yet about one-third of patients are referred to follow-up imaging, according to a 2013 study. And whole-body CT scans expose you to much more radiation than regular CT scans. One study determined that for every 1,250 45-year-old adults who have the exam, one will die of cancer as a result. Yet it’s unknown how many lives the scans might save."

One 45-year-old person will die of cancer as a result of a whole-body CT scan! That’s shocking -- but not totally surprising. CTs are utilize powerful radiation technology to investigate the tissues of the body layer by layer; whole-body CTs expose the whole body.

I’ve had a lot of x-rays due to a congenital hip condition, so I’m extremely leery of all medical uses of radiation technology; but CTs are prescribed so often, I’ve even had a couple of them. But I haven’t had a full body scan. However, less than a year ago I was told I must have one.

In New Mexico, I went to see a specialist about a small lesion that had begun to distort the vision in my right eye. Dr. Seligson, the opthamologist I had seen in Santa Fe, thought I had TB, but he insisted that I must see Dr. Shelley Lee at the University of New Mexico Eye Clinic in Albuquerque, to confirm his diagnosis. She is a specialist in uveitis, inflammation of the eye.

Dr. Lee was a youthful, slender woman with a narrow intelligent face framed by straight black hair. She worked late and appeared to be very dedicated to her clients. I liked her at once.

In the grey examining room lit only by the glare from a large computer screen, she showed me vastly enlarged images of the choroid of my eyes. (According to the web site of the National Institutes of Health, “the choroid is the layer of blood vessels and connective tissue between the sclera (white of the eye) and retina. It is part of the uvea and supplies nutrients to the inner parts of the eye.”) Both images were green from the dye that had been shot into my veins an hour earlier. Here was the healthy eye. Here was the sick one, covered with brown spots. It looked pretty creepy.

Dr. Lee looked me over carefully, a woman of advanced years, unaccompanied, intelligent, who did not appear to be terrified, and said, "I think you have cancer and it has metastasized to your eye."

Just like that.

In three weeks, I was moving to California. I had great plans for this move, but I was also very anxious. Now I had cancer!  Should I even go? or just curl up and prepare to die?

Dr. Lee ordered several blood tests, an MRI of the head and neck and a whole-body CT scan. She urged me to complete the tests before leaving because there might be delays in California while I established care.

I tried my best, but the two scans were scheduled just a few days before my departure and I was becoming exhausted. I did the MRI, but the night before the CT I was supposed to drink two liters of fluid that I supposed might have something to do with emptying my bowels . . . and I just wasn't up for it. I postponed the test.

Once in Sonoma, I learned that the small local hospital did not have the right machine for the whole-body scan. I could go to another hospital if I wished, but my doctor and the radiologist thought that the three regular scans would be sufficient; the brain scan would not be included but the MRI had been negative. Another study of the brain didn’t seem necessary.

So I was spared. The three CTs took five minutes; the whole-body version would have been an hour long. That is a lot of exposure.

They were all completely normal.

Unless something is lurking in the folds of my stomach lining, or some other equally obscure place, I am still "good to go."

Something might have shown up in the full-body scan, but that can lead to new problems. These powerful diagnostic tools sometimes reveal mysterious abnormalities that may or may not indicate a serious condition; then doctors order another CT "just to make sure."

That can be the beginning of cancer where none existed! According to Consumer Reports, a 2013 Australian study had shown that people who undergo whole-body scans have a 24 percent higher chance of developing cancer.

I’m glad Dr. Lee was wrong, but I’m very concerned about the way she presented her diagnosis. Cancer is greatly influenced by one’s state of mind, and for several days after seeing Dr. Lee, I was already succumbing to it.

Be careful before you have that whole-body CT!

The power goes to the young...

...and the wisdom to the elders!

I went to the elegant senior center here in Sonoma, aptly named, for wine country, Vintage House, to check out the class in Gentle Yoga.

Vintage House does not feel like an institution. It is designed more like a hotel or conference setting. There's a Renaissance style fountain in the middle of the circular driveway, and as you enter the reception area there's a beautiful arched entry that marks the hallway to the classroom area. At the end of the hall, there's a grand all-purpose room called Stone Room, with a lofty vaulted ceiling, hardwood floor and windows all around, which is used for parties, lectures and various exercise classes.

The Gentle Yoga class is huge! There must be a hundred people there, most of them women. They were laying down their mats as I entered the room, chatting with friends, and generally settling in. I went up to the front, obviously designated as the teacher's area, to await Julia Vining, the instructor. For a few minutes I was just standing there looking silly.

Then I noticed a tall, buxom, smiling woman, obviously not a senior, across the room. That must be the one!

Yes, she said, introducing herself.

I asked if I could join the class, and she welcomed me to do so. "I have a few physical limitations," I said. She smiled broadly, "Everyone does," she said, "you just do what you feel comfortable doing." She was radiant with confidence and the power to be understanding, patient, generous.

She went to the closet to take out a mat for me. Here she was, instructing a roomful of grandmothers. She was strong, warm, and also professional. She was in charge, and I was the humble student, here to follow her instructions and advice. All the power of a woman in the full flowering of womanhood was hers, mine a mere dwindling sliver of the girl-I-used-to-be. And that is as it should be.

This reminded me of a couple of conversations I've had recently about relating to our adult children. This topic has loomed large for me lately because I am struggling with my own daughter over how to redefine our relationship to suit her terms and desires. And believe me, the power is hers.

I feel daunted by this challenge from her. I feel, perhaps unnecessarily, that my identity is at stake here. Indeed, both our identities are at stake. She is fighting to retain hers against what apparently is the towering challenge of dealing with her mother, about whom she has very mixed feelings. She wants to arrange our relationship entirely according to her preferences.

That leaves me feeling stripped of all my appurtenances and powers, reduced to a feeble shadow of my former self and grappling helplessly with how to be recognizable to myself while accommodating this young woman's directives -- because I want to have a relationship with her. It's important to me!

I am struck by the ease with which my friend Joanne describes how she responds to the directives of her daughter-in-law. Joanne came down with pneumonia while she was visiting her son's family over Christmas, but once she was provided with the necessary antibiotics, Rosie had plans for her. I can just see Rosie standing in front of graceful 73-year old Joanne, larger than life, declaring what's on the schedule. "Tomorrow night we're having a party and I need you to take the kids out while we prepare and then of course we'll have the Christmas parade through the neighborhood. I've got tickets for all of you for the children's theater on Thursday and..." da-da, da-dee, da doo. Looks like a scenario for a fight, and indeed, it could be.

But Joanne, with no loss of dignity whatsoever, just follows instructions. "I love being with the kids, and you know, my son, he adores his wife, and if I got into conflict with her, I wouldn't stand a chance."

I can see myself in her place, feeling diminished by the situation and tensing into resistance. Joanne is wiser. Her identity is not at stake here, not at all. She'd rather be home at this point, recovering more quietly from her pneumonia, but what the heck. She's here, and she's going to follow the program. Even with pneumonia, Joanne has a lot of energy. But her energy is partly due to lack of resistance. She loves her son and his family and she's happy to be of service.

Another friend, joining me for tea, speaks about her relationship with her son. Mary has been practicing Buddhism for 30 years. It has helped her learn to develop presence, she says, to be with what is happening without the clatter produced by the mind.

She too has learned to enjoy her relationship with her son even though it's much less than what she would wish. "We need them more than they need us," she said. "That's just the way it is."

Somehow our children do not feel obligated to come home for Thanksgiving or to make a regular phone call to check in on us. "The nuclear family," Mary says, waving her hands across her midriff, "has broken down." Is that what it is? Or were we too permissive? A woman in my women's group says, "I just don't understand it. Why are mothers blamed for everything? Why don't children ask themselves what it is to be a good child? We gave birth to them, sometimes in great pain, we raised them. What if it wasn't perfect?"

They owe us something, was the implication, reflecting the old fashioned attitude to the Great Parent-Child Divide. You do what is expected of you, regardless of what you'd like.

Adult children have the energy, the strength, the power that we no longer have. If they don't recognize their responsibility in the way we would like, wise elders accept what they receive with grace. We don't want to be a burden on our kids, and we hope not to become dependent on them in the end. The young are busy, building careers, raising families, both parents working; they are under a lot of pressure. It's a new ballgame, a dynamic where tradition no longer reigns. And it's challenging, not only for us but for society. A great many people are coming to age now, and who will care for them?

For us, shifting from being in charge, as we used to be, to being in gratitude, is a profound shift for aging parents. We do well to discover this wisdom in our new roles, in the surprising context of our longer lives, with grace.

One hand on the reins

My mother used to call it autonomy… having none herself, she gradually sank into a pit my father later characterized as Alzheimer’s. And that may well be, but it was his tyranny, not some physical cause, that triggered it. She simply had nothing to do. He shopped, he cooked, he gardened.

We've known for some time that having choice…and something or someone to care for…enriches life experience at any age; and for people in nursing homes, even a plant to water and feed themselves is an asset for healthy living.

When others do everything for you, bathing you, feeding you, preparing your meals, doing your laundry, and someone, such as an adult child, makes financial decisions for you that you may not agree with, it helps to have one or two things you can do for yourself.

It’s about finding a balance; as with most things related to health, a mental and physical state of proportion (as the Greeks called it) or equanimity, as the Buddhists do, is critical.

A widely quoted study (summary below) concluded in 1986 that some control is advised, especially for the younger elders, but as life advances, too much responsibility becomes overwhelming with too much stress associated with it.

Like children, the very old may want to be cared for; not to be robbed of our autonomy, mind you, but nurtured, attended, considered and included. I'm not there yet, but I can relate. The other day as I was getting ready to attend a meeting at a local church I fancied myself being escorted there. I had a mental picture of being dropped at the door while someone, my husband, boyfriend or friend, parked the car. It wasn’t the chore of driving or parking that I so wished someone else would take care of, it was the attention to my well-being. Old people like that. And younger ones, too! I chuckled thinking, How can you feel like a Queen unless somebody serves you?

But we have a negative idea of service in our society. Service is something that illegal Mexicans do, and we don’t have to grant them citizenship for doing it, cheap labor to weed the orchard, wash up the dishes, or care for the sick elderly. We hire it, and we don’t even pay very much for it, unless we are very kind and rather rich. But we don’t value it.

A

I remember in the 70s when so many of us were following Indian gurus, we were trained in seva, which means, service. Our service was not considered lowly, but divine. It was our gift, our offering.

In our spiritual family, we took care of babies, including those that weren’t our own, and we tended the elder members until they died. 

Now we are the elder members, and there’s no one to care for some of us! Our society has trended back to its traditional self-reliance. You can hear the Midwestern accent, the gravelly voice saying, I don’t owe nobody nothing. Right?

Now self reliance has morphed into narcissism. It’s just all-about-us! It’s about my health, my diet, my radiant skin; my career, my healing, my self-empowerment. And I do include you in that. But I’m not going to wait on you!  

In such an environment, it’s critical to be independent; that’s the key value. We've got to make the effort to survive on our own. When true self reliance is not available to us, we are typically stripped of all responsibility and dumped in a care home.

That complete loss of control – of autonomy – is bad for our health. We need to let the next generation know that while we do love to sit down at the dining table for the family dinner, we can still make toast.

Science 19 September 1986:

Vol. 233 no. 4770 pp. 1271-1276

DOI: 10.1126/science.3749877

ARTICLES

Aging and health: effects of the sense of control

J Rodin

ABSTRACT

The relation between health and a sense of control may grow stronger in old age. This could occur through three types of processes: experiences particularly relevant to control may increase markedly in old age; the association between control and some aspect of health may be altered by age; and age may influence the association between control and health-related behaviors or the seeking of medical care. Studies show that there are detrimental effects on the health of older people when their control of their activities is restricted; in contrast, interventions that enhance options for control by nursing home patients promote health. With increasing age, however, variability in preferred amounts of control also increases, and sometimes greater control over activities, circumstances, or health has negative consequences including stress, worry, and self-blame. Mechanisms mediating the control-health relation include feelings of stress, symptom labeling, changes in the neuroendocrine and immune systems, and behavior relevant to health maintenance.

Back From Fatigue

Here I am again, after two months' absence from this page; and what a time it has been!

When I wrote about moving to a new location in the county where I had once lived for 16 years, I was focusing on the necessary exercises we go through after a move -- establishing routines, learning directions, and creating new social networks. All of this is good for the brain, unless, of course, it's too much for the brain -- too much effort, too much stress, and, as a result, too much fatigue. Just too much everything!

I just became completely exhausted. Do you remember staying up late night after night, cramming for final exams? It wasn't until it was all over that you finally collapsed. I'm an active person, but last month if I closed my eyes after lunch, I fell asleep.

I started to worry that I had some unbearable illness; but if I do, doctors haven't found it. Of course I'm relieved, but then I start to worry. Maybe the doctor is missing something? Doctors here seem to be very upbeat and cheerful. Does that mean they're not paying attention?  I remember a doctor I had in Santa Fe. When I had a pain in the chest, she wouldn't see me unless I went to the ER to have all the tests for heart attack. Another time she ordered a full pulmonary panel because I told her I coughed once or twice when I woke up in the morning and had been a smoker. She was extreme, but you could be sure she left no stone unturned. She would find something even if it was just a pebble.

My physician is conscientious enough. When something is bothering me, she goes after the easiest explanation first. The last time I went to see her it was about my fatigue. All my recent blood tests had been normal. I asked her whether the move could have just wiped me out and she agreed we should explore that possibility. She didn't really have any suggestions, although she did applaud one of mine.

This is what I did:

At my local supplements store, Pharmaca, where you can find natural medicines as well as purchase your prescriptions, the helpful sales associate suggested a form of B-12 that is easily absorbed. It's called methylcobalamin. As we age, he told me, we become less able to derive B-12 from foods. Just one or two raspberry flavored sprays into the mouth, and in a few days you should be feeling better, he said. And I did.

Another thing I picked up was a formula for adrenal support. Constant stress wears out the adrenal glands located on top of each kidney; they release the adrenaline that triggers the rise of cortisol which is useful in an emergency but sustained high cortisol levels "destroy healthy muscle and bone, slow down healing and normal cell regeneration, co-opt biochemicals need to make other vital hormone, impair digestion, metabolism and mental function, interfere with healthy endocrine function and weaken your immune system," according to Marcelle Pick, OB-GYN nurse practitioner. Wow. I certainly did not know that cortisol can destroy muscles and bones! I've had lots of problems with weak muscles and bones. The Adrenal Support formula, a combination of several Ayurveduc adaptogenic hers, has been helpful.

Lastly, I decided to go to acupuncture. That's the idea my physician encouraged. Are you familiar with the People's Organization of Community Acupuncture? It's a great thing! POCA was created to make acupuncture available to working class people and others with limited incomes who needed to have regular treatments for chronic illnesses -- people like you and me, trying to "stay alive" after 60.

In Community Acupuncture clinics, which you can locate at the POCA website above, patients stretch out on recliners in a large open room. The practitioner visits each in turn, talking briefly, inserting the needles, then moving on to the next person. Relaxing music plays, and patients doze off or just enjoy a little quiet time while the needles do their work. It's so pleasant, and it's affordable! The clinic that I visit, in Petaluma, charges $20-40 sliding scale.

The supplements, the acupuncture, and taking a little more rest have helped recharge my system, though when I'm feeling good I tend to overdo, the way I did yesterday and the day before. As a Capricorn, I'm always trying to be productive; but as astrologer Rio Olesky recommended in his monthly horoscope for October, this month was a good time for Capricorns to find other ways to spend their time.

I just didn't listen. I've been trying all day to get out to the Community Farm where I do some volunteer gardening, when all I really felt like doing was going back to bed. Oh well. There's always time to go back to bed! At least I've updated my blog -- and in the process, I've remembered that I'm still recovering from adrenal fatigue. According to Marcelle Pick, recovery can take as long as four months! I'd better build up my strength before I start running around town again.

After I do this load of laundry . . .

Those Old Country Roads

Returning can be risky!

Last Saturday I drove out to the West County, where I used to live, to attend a CodePink Peace Camp at Ocean Song Farm and Wilderness Center -- and got caught in a web of nostalgia that almost tripped me up.

Ocean Song is a 350-acre property west of Occidental, the village that is the centerpiece of the rural community in which we lived, where five roads intersect in a little valley nestled between two ridges. When we first moved up there from San Francisco, the main street, which is only two blocks long, wasn't even paved.

The area was settled by Italian families around the turn of the last century and adopted by hippies fleeing the city to put their feet back on the ground and make their gardens grow. They became some of the first organic farmers in the country; and of course, they also grew magnificent pot.

Coming from the southeastern part of this sprawling county, where I now live, I chose not to drive through town. I was trying to be efficient, but perhaps I was also trying to avoid the seductive trap of recollection and regret that was lurking around every turn, ready to draw me in.

But as it turned out, the alternate route was just as reminiscent of my life here. Driving along Bodega Highway, I remembered taking that road every morning during the two years I worked for a newspaper out on the coast, Bodega Bay Navigator, after my marriage split up.

When I turned onto Joy Road, I was joined by other presences, whispers from those former days, as if I were again accompanied by two or more children chattering and laughing in the back seats on the way to the beach, or someone's sleepover, or perhaps the monthly mother-daughter potluck that Amy and I attended when she was in Middle School; or the time we hit a deer coming home from an event at the coast and didn't stop because my husband was certain he saw it get up and run off into the woods.

It wasn't always a merry good time. The kids might be fighting over the choice of radio station, someone might be yelling or moping and crying, I might have been irritable or tired of settling arguments and negotiating demands, but despite all that, I loved being a mother, and I loved the person I was then (most of the time); and in retrospect I loved her even more.

These roads, like old houses, seem to mirror the tracks memory carves in the brain. The landscape is quite distinct from where I am living now. Around Sonoma, the hills are molded and firm like young breasts, covered with golden oat grass that resembles blonde fur when the wind sweeps through. But around Occidental the hills are mostly obscured by forest and scruffy shrubs, a mix of various oaks, madrone, bay laurel, willow, pine and a few redwoods, and the sides of the road are cluttered with an effusion of native plants (aka weeds) and wildflowers. This is the land that fought off the developers and chose to remain as it had been. The old farmhouses are unpretentious and homey, set back from the road, some with fences beginning to cave and porches starting to sag. But they are comfortable, settled into the land, like the families who have lived in them since the 70s, raised their kids and stayed. They may have divorced and remarried, but they haven't left the community, and their lives are intertwined with the land.

Unlike mine! From poignant reminiscence my mood shifted to one of deep regret. I hadn't had to leave and hadn't really wanted to, but it's what I did, and there's no turning the clock back. Nor will it help to listen to the voice in my head that is getting ready to scold me for not working night and day in order to keep my cottage in the redwoods. There's plenty of fault to find, no question; but a scolding is not going to bring it back. I lost my house and my settled country life because I needed a change. I didn't realize how difficult it was going to be to come back.

As I made the turn onto Coleman Valley Road, I began thinking, I am still not home. I have to find a way to move back where I belong. By the time I reached the gate to Ocean Song, my mind was still locked into a few words repeating themselves like the sounds of a train on the track. I have to come back, I have to come back, clicketty clack, I have to come back where I belong!

But then I paused to breathe in the astonishing view spread out below, the rows of blue green hills, the fog bank spread out between them, the far distance sea, and awe took the place of my repetitious chatter.

People move on. It's what happens. Had I not left, I would have missed the many great experiences I had in New Mexico. Had I not returned, I wouldn't be having this experience of revisiting the life I had here and linking it up with the one I am making now in a very different setting. In Sonoma, a Wine Country "destination" known all across the country.

Rebecca Solnit says it well:  "The self is also a creation, the principle work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live on."

That's what it comes down to: designing a life, learning its lessons, growing all the way to the very end.

I made my way down the hill to sample the delicious California country buffet and connect with old friends.