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Dubose

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There is a conference center on Monteagle Mountain, in Tennessee. I am familiar with it because of the Episcopal church. I have been there numerous times over my life for retreats when I was in college and later as an adult. I love the Spanish-style courtyard. I remembered how much I loved it when I returned to it in November of 2012 for Cursillo. I regret that I didn’t take pictures then, because when I returned in April for a different retreat they had dug up my favorite tree in the center of the courtyard and also hacked away at two others. It was rather sad looking. The only advantage was that it made it easier to see the beautiful buildings.

I know that the conference center is open to groups other than those affiliated with the Episcopal church. This gives me hope, because I would like to go there again. The rooms aren’t great, but the ambiance is pretty amazing. The food is very comforting and filling, with a very kind and pleasant kitchen staff.

This is the first view I normally have of the courtyard. This is just off the foyer from the main entrance.

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Panning right.

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A little further right.
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A view of the same area at a different time of day, standing out and further to the right.
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Turning from that area to the left.
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This is taken a little further to the side and back, and shows the corner that I was standing in to take the first pictures. I love this view, and saw it every morning on the way to breakfast, as the meal hall is in the building to the far left.

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Now I’m standing where the arches are, so I’m at the end of the walkway away from the entrance to the courtyard. The dining hall is straight ahead. At the far left is the area I was standing to take the last picture.
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Panning right.

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Turning around, looking at the arches.

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Turning further right. I love these angles.
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Stepping back, and looking further right.
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Now, let’s step into the arches, and turn with our left shoulder facing the entrance to the courtyard. In the fall, the maple tree at the end of this area is glorious.
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Then, turning around, the entrance to the main chapel and a classroom that is above it, called “The Upper Room”.
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There are a lot of little foyers on the way to the classroom and the chapel, and outside, to the left of one is this interesting sculpture. Sadly, I’ve forgotten who he is. I don’t think he is Dubose.
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Here he is straight on.
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If you go further left you’ll see the covered walkway to one of the dorms. They are exactly like 1950’s Holiday Inn hotel rooms.
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Standing on that walkway, with my back to the dorm rooms.
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I hope you have enjoyed our little tour, and that you get a chance to go.

Evolution of a sinkhole

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We have a sinkhole on the land that the library is on. The prevalence of sinkholes is possibly why the family that owned the land donated it to the city rather than selling it. There is a really cool area just past the parking lot that serves as a sort of drain for the area. Heavy rains pour into it, and then sink down. There is a lot of limestone in this section, and trees grow up around it and protect it from (some) erosion.

But then there are other areas away from it that are developing subsidence. There are small sinkholes developing. I’ve taken pictures of one area over time, and just now thought to put a few of them here. I’ll try to keep an eye on it and add more to this story as it develops.

The first time I noticed the extra sinkhole, they had put a barricade around it. They roped it off to prevent people from accidentally falling into it while they got an engineer to figure out what to do.

This is what was decided.
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They put a huge tarp in it, and drop boulders into it. The idea was not only to plug up the hole but to prevent more dirt from washing away. They had at least twenty boulders to put in it. It was an all-day event. I’m glad saw this going on because it was pretty cool.

This lasted about a year. Then they had to add more rocks on top of the area, as it had sunk down. They are smaller than the first batch. Here’s the “after” shot.
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That was about six months ago. That too has started to subside.
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In my face.

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I was at a buffet a few months ago and saw a brother playing with his baby sister. She was in a baby carrier, sitting on a chair. The brother kept leaning in, right up in her face. He would grab the sides of the carrier with his hands and pull in, speaking loudly to his sister, getting nose to nose with her.

I felt great anxiety at this. I guess it is triggering a memory. I felt for the little girl, unable to say that she didn’t like this, unable to get away from him. Again and again he was putting his face right up into hers. Again and again I felt that I should say something. He was so forceful that he was pushing her carrier further back each time.

The parents were there. I’m sure they thought he was just playing with her. I’m sure they didn’t think of the psychological trauma this might be causing. They were chatting with their friends and ignoring their children. They didn’t notice how forceful he was.

Perhaps the daughter enjoyed this. Perhaps I was overreacting. But every time I felt breathless and anxious. Every time I felt that someone should get him to think about how this would look from her perspective. She can’t back away – she’s trapped in her carrier. She can’t tell him no – she is an infant and cannot speak. Sure, she could make a noise to show her disapproval. But my concern is that she was being “taught” that being attacked is normal, that being pushed up against a wall is how she should be treated.

I’d also be concerned if this was a sister doing this to a baby brother. But I feel I’m more sensitive to this particular situation because I feel that I was treated like this. I feel that I was treated as a thing, an object, and not a person.

My brother was not my friend. He was my tormentor. He was my enemy. I don’t understand when people say how wonderful and protective their brothers are, how they can always call them for help and always count on them. It just sounds like a fairy tale.

I’m starting to understand that it isn’t my fault that I had a terrible relationship with my brother. I was taught by my culture and my religion that it was my responsibility to try harder to have a better relationship with him. Codependency comes free with a church membership. I’m starting to understand that he is just a narcissistic jerk, and I had the misfortune of having him as a big brother. I’m grateful that I severed all ties with him.

I wonder what our childhood would have been like if I had been born first?

After a while, I did say something to the boy. I felt like I had to. I asked him to be gentle with his sister. His father whipped around and stared at me. I’m sure he was thinking how dare this stranger tell his children what to do. I just smiled sweetly back. He turned back around to his plateful of food and his ball cap wearing friends.

So much for “It takes a village.”

“Furbaby”

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Please for the love of all that is holy in this world, stop calling your dog or your cat your “furbaby.” I get it. I get that you don’t want to think of your dog or your cat as a pet. He or she is like a member of the family. But a dog or a cat is not a child, no matter how fondly you think of it.

You didn’t give birth to it. You weren’t even pregnant with it.

You don’t have to save up for its college education.

You can leave it alone in the house when it is very young and not get arrested.

It won’t ever call you at 3 a.m. for bail money.

It won’t ever ask for keys to the car.

The only crossover is that perhaps you might find out one day that it is unintentionally pregnant – but there too, the comparison ends. You would go to jail if you advertised in the newspaper that your daughter’s children were “free to a good home.” Then, let’s consider those people who are dog breeders. They sell the offspring. That too would be illegal if they were human.

Please. No more “furbaby.” Let the term die. It is bizarre.

Bluets

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Allow me to introduce you to one of my favorite flowers. They are called bluets. I first saw them when I was on my honeymoon. We went to Grandfather Mountain, which is in the Western part of North Carolina. They are tiny little flowers – less than an inch across. They are a delicate pale sky blue, with a gold center. They bloom in May. I think of them as our special wedding flower. I feel like they bloomed just for us, to celebrate our wedding.

Here is a huge bank of them on Grandfather Mountain.
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Let’s get closer, shall we?
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Oh, why not get even closer?
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Gosh, they are so lovely, why not get right up in them?
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They are like looking at a field of stars.

I love them in part because they are not showy. They don’t call attention to themselves. You have to get right up on top of them to see them, which is perfect for my eyesight. I have come to really appreciate tiny things because that is all I can see well these days. I have to take my glasses off to see anything this close, but I see it better than I see regular things with my glasses. Bifocals are in my future.
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Parenting license.

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I wear baggy clothes for the same reason some people gain weight. I do it to hide. Somehow in wearing something too large, shapeless and styleless, I’m hiding who I really am. I know, deep down, that even if I were naked, I’d still not be showing my true self. The soul is deeper than skin.

Perhaps my need to wear dull colors is also a self defense technique. It says don’t notice me. It is the same as camouflage for birds. The male cardinal is red. But the female is brown. She is the one who protects the young. Perhaps the child I am protecting is myself.

I know that lots of things were taken from me as a child. I know that I was not loved or cherished. I know that my room was gone into without my permission. I know that my money was stolen by my dad and my brother. My brother stole it from my room. My dad just took it out of my savings account. He saw it as a spare account for him. Much of my money as a child came from my grandmother. She was his mother. I know that he expected my Mom to give him the Christmas money that she got from his Mom. He saw any money from her as money for him. Money is a symbol. Perhaps he felt that she never gave him enough of anything. Perhaps he was jealous if she gave anything to anyone else.

He was greedy. He was selfish. He was a glutton. He did not care about other people’s feelings. If I told him that I had a headache, he would tell me about how he had a bigger headache once. Maybe he thought that by pointing out how it could be worse, I should get over it. Maybe he was just self centered and didn’t know how anything could be about anyone who wasn’t him.

If I told him about something emotional, something that made me sad or angry, he offered a pill. They were all prescription. But prescribed doesn’t mean healthy. Medicating your feelings is escaping them. I’m grateful I never took him up on it. I’m sad that I wasn’t taught how to deal with my feelings.

It is just like with alcohol. Just because it is legal doesn’t mean it is healthy. If you drink to deal with your feelings, you are abusing yourself and your children. You aren’t teaching them how to be human. You are teaching them how to escape. You are stunting their emotional growth.

You are supposed to trust your parents. They are supposed to look out for you. They aren’t supposed to get zonked out on substances, legal or otherwise. They aren’t supposed to just take up space on your childhood. They aren’t supposed to chain smoke themselves to death. They aren’t supposed to leave you high and dry.

My parents abandoned me before they died. They just weren’t there. Perhaps they did me a favor by dying. It meant that I got to learn that their normal wasn’t normal at all. I had to start looking out for myself and learning from others.

I find I get really angry when I see a family where the parents reek of cigarette smoke. They are poisoning their children every day. Even if they smoke outside of the house, they are shortening their lives day by day, and they are reducing their energy level bit by bit. Even before they die they have stopped being alive. Smoking is theft. It steals your health and your life from your children.

I find I get really angry when I see parents treating their children how I was treated. I want to yell at the Mom for treating her son like he is an embarrassment or an interruption. I get really angry when I see this same mom who growls at her child for doing things that are normal for children decides to have even more children.

I get really sad when I see these children look so sad. If eyes are the windows of the soul, his soul is screaming “Rescue me, someone, anyone. I am in hell.”

I asked three people what I could do. A minister. A teacher. A therapist. They said I can’t do anything. I just have to watch this happen.

Is it possible that there were people who saw me as a child and wondered the same thing?

Some people are simply not capable of being selfless enough to have children.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t right.

You have to pass a driver’s test to get a driver’s license. The theory is so you prove that you are safe. But amateurs get to have children. Sadly, the driver doesn’t get caught in the flaming wreckage. The passenger does.

Hair philosophy.

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I cut my own hair. I’ve cut my own hair since I was in college. My brother’s wife at the time was a hairdresser and she happened to mention that she cut her own hair. I’d never even considered such a thing. I always thought that was something that you had hire someone to do. How many other things are possible if we just hear that we can do it ourselves?

Fortunately when I first started cutting my own hair I was in college, where it didn’t really matter what my hair looked like. I had a job on campus to pay off my student loan, so it wasn’t like a real job. If my hair looked weird I wasn’t going to get fired. Plus, having strange hair is part of being in college. If it looked really strange I could wear a hat.

I cut my hair like I trim shrubbery. I whack at it until it doesn’t bother me. Just like shrubbery, it will grow back, so there really isn’t too much that can go wrong. Well, there was the time that I cut off way too much and had to trim up the rest to match… It turns out that I look good with a Mohawk. It is more about attitude than style. If you carry the “yeah, I meant this” attitude, you can get away with any style.

I have gotten my hair cut professionally before and it always seems to be done wrong. I have a weird random cowlick that starts about four inches down on my right side. I know where it is but the hairdressers never do. I’ve decided that it is just easier to cut my own hair. Why pay to get my hair cut, and have it done badly, when I can screw it up myself for free?

If you are a highly sensitive person, cutting your own hair is the way to go. Going to a hairdressing salon can be a very overwhelming experience if you have sensory processing disorder. No more dealing with a stranger touching your head. No more feeling trapped in that uncomfortable chair with a person standing behind you. No more smelling the strong chemicals in the salon.

After all these years I’ve gotten pretty good at cutting my own hair. It takes a bit of practice to get right, because I am working backwards in a mirror. The trick is to cut a little bit at a time and make small adjustments. Also – have a simple hairstyle.

I used to cut my hair as a study break in college. I studied a lot, and when the stress would get to me I’d cut my hair. I guess I got in more practice that way. It didn’t look that bad. In fact, a friend wanted her hair cut like mine and I cut her hair for free. She looked like me and also worked on campus. It was funny dealing with people in the bookstore where I worked who would stare at me and say “Weren’t you in the computer lab?” I’d assure them that I wasn’t. They wouldn’t believe me. I’d ask – was I really quiet and shy, or energetic like I am now? The quiet and shy one is Beth, not Betsy. Plus – her hairstyle wasn’t exactly like mine – it was the mirror of mine. It was a funny summer.

The philosophy of adventure games.

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When I was a child I had a Commodore VIC-20. It wasn’t a very powerful computer, but it was something. My phone can do more than this thing can, but that has more to say about technology today. I played very simple games on it because the computing power of it was so low.

There were text-only adventure games that I enjoyed. They went under the name “Scott Adams Adventure Games”. They were like the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books but you didn’t have to keep up with which page you were on.

One of my favorites was my first. It was called “Adventureland.” I’d played it for a few months and found only three of the treasures. I knew that there were ten more, and I’d been all over that world trying to figure out what I had missed. Because it was text only, I couldn’t go on any physical clues. It isn’t like today, where I can play a game with my husband and one of us will notice a glint or a shimmer on the side of the screen and know there is something there we need to pay attention to.

We had invited over a neighbor’s daughter for the evening. She was much older than I was, an adult. I’m not sure why I was allowed to put on my adventure game while she was there. It seems kind of rude to have on a game while visitors are present. It was in the living room, hooked up to the television. This was the monitor. As I said, it was a simple computer. The game took up so much computing power the game itself had to supply more RAM to make it work.

Perhaps I wanted to show it off. Perhaps we had run out of ways to entertain her but the evening was not over. I know that she wasn’t expected to play bridge with my parents, possibly because that requires four people and I didn’t know how to play.

I put in the game and explained how it worked. It is a little hard to keep up with where you are in the game, so I had written up a map. N, W, U, D – easy. I had in all the directions of how to get from “room” to “room” with a tiny description of what was in each area so I could re-orient myself if I put in the wrong directions. I showed her how the interface worked, with its simple commands.

And then she noticed the tree. There was a tree that was very prominent in one “room” of the game, and there had been a treasure in it. You had to climb the tree to get it. I’d quickly ignored the tree as a future source of other goodies. Generally you only get one thing in one area. But there was more to be found there – lots more.

Part of the game, like all adventure games, was that you picked up everything that wasn’t nailed down. In this game you could have an inventory of about six things at a time. One of the items that I had was an ax. I had no idea what I needed it for, but I had it, because that is what you do with adventure games.

Perhaps that is a little twisted about adventure games. They teach you to go into every room possible and to pick up everything you can. So they teach you breaking and entering and theft. They also teach you that if you fail, you can just hit the reset button and try it all over again. These lessons aren’t really healthy lessons to be imprinting on a young mind. But I digess.

Our visitor asked me to chop the tree down with the ax. I thought that was the silliest thing ever. That won’t do anything. But to humor her, I did. I put in the command in the way the game needed it – probably “Take AX. Use AX on TREE.” It had very finicky syntax needs. Half the game was figuring out how to talk to it.

The tree fell down. Then we “looked” at the tree again, and there was a rotten stump – the tree had been hollow. And then we went down into the tree – and the rest of the world opened up. There was a whole complex of tunnels and passages under there, filled with more puzzles to solve and treasure to find. That was what I’d been looking for all along and I just didn’t know it. I had the tool to do it, I just didn’t use it because I dismissed it.

It was because of a stranger’s “Why not?” that made it possible for me to solve the rest of the game. It took a few more weeks to solve it because there was so much to it and I had to barter time to use the TV to play my game. If I was playing my game, nobody else could watch TV.

Isn’t that the way it always is? We get set in our ways, thinking that our way is the only right way, and yet we know we are missing something. Then a stranger comes along and suggests something so off the wall that we are sure it has to be wrong. We get stuck up in our pride and we can’t move forward.

I just knew her idea had to be fruitless because she had never played any adventure game. I was showing it to her. It was my game. She was just a passenger, I was the driver. Who was she to tell me how to play this game and where to go? But she was totally right. Thank goodness I got over my pride and tried her suggestion. If it weren’t for her I would have probably just decided the game was too hard and given up.

Dissociate

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There is a reason my dentist likes how I am as a patient. I dissociate when I’m there. It is as if I pull away from my body.

It is a skill I learned when I was a child. I was abused and neglected. It is a normal coping mechanism for me. I know it isn’t normal. I know it isn’t healthy. When you can’t escape a bad situation, sometimes it is the only way you can survive.

Some people escape by drinking or doing drugs. When you are a child you don’t have these resources. When you are raised in a house where emotions are not expressed, dissociation is a way to escape.

My parents never showed any healthy emotions. They never hugged in front of me. One time I came into the kitchen and they were hugging and they stopped, embarrassed. I never heard them say “I love you” to each other.

It is a wonder I’m as sane as I am.

I remember intentionally forgetting something really bad in my childhood. I remember saying to myself that I could forget it. Apparently I did a great job because I don’t know what it was that I forgot.

It is like showing up to the scene of the crime and seeing all the evidence. I know something bad happened but I don’t know what.

So when bad things happen to me, especially physically, I tend to separate from my body. It is a coping mechanism that I have learned. I suspect I could unlearn it, but first I have to catch myself doing it. I do it so well that I don’t even notice it until after it is over.

I remember doing it after my parents died. I had to take care of things but I didn’t want to. It felt as if I was looking at the world from far back in my skull. It is as if everything was far away and I was seeing it through a telescope , or down a well. Sounds were distant. Nothing was good or fun or interesting. Everything was just a chore. Perhaps this is a normal part of grief.

When my priest started attacking me for my opinions about church, I started doing it too. I backed up in my mind. I was sitting there but my mind wasn’t there. Fortunately I had been going to a spiritual director and I remembered to pray and ask Jesus into it.

I do it at the chiropractors office too. I like going there, but I realized that I was blanking out part of how he adjusts me. There is a point where he has me cross my arms in front of my chest and he leans me back on the table. He throws his upper body on mine to pop my back. It is very fast, but I realized later that I was blanking that out. I realized that I was unable to describe to my husband how the doctor adjusted me at that point. Later, I was waiting to go into a room and I saw him adjust another patient in the same way and realized I’d just “left” every time he did it.

Monday was my reexam. It was time to be reevaluated as to how well the adjustments are going. It is also time to figure out how often I need to go. I had just gone twice a week and not thought about it. Now I was taking time and thinking.

It is bodywork. He is literally breaking up parts of me that are not flexible. And one way of dealing with dissociation is to flood the person with the problem thing. Don’t run away from it – face it head on.

Should I ask him to modify how he adjusts me, or should I just go into it with open eyes?

I debated with myself on Monday whether I should tell him what was going on in my head. Should I tell him I was possibly molested as a child?

I was writing this while in the therapy room. That is 10 minutes of TENS treatment. It is boring, so I write. While I was writing I remembered “asking Jesus into it”. Why not?

So I did. I prayed. Jesus, help me know what to do. Give me the words to say. Help me be healed.

And I told the doctor and he was very kind. We had the adjustment as usual, but I was present and mindful.

And I’ve come to see it as the same motion as being baptised in a river. We go down, held. We go down, backwards, trusting. We go down, into breathlessness. And we arise, changed.

Health advice from near strangers

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There have been several patrons who have asked where I was recently. They noticed that I was gone for a bit. I’m part of the place – I’ve been there since it opened. That was thirteen years ago. Some think I retired. That would be nice, but I can’t retire for at least 15 more years. I try not to think about how much of my life is being spent here. That is partly why I blog.

I tell them that I was on vacation for a week, and I was out a bit before that because I slipped a disc in my back. With the first part they sometimes want to know where I went. I stayed home. I did as much nothing as possible. I read a lot. I played some video games. I meant to collage or paint but instead I read books about image transfer. I still can’t figure it out and I think I’m just going to have to waste a few canvases and try something out.

The second part of my story is the funny part. When they hear I slipped a disc, they have a lot of questions. How did it happen? It happened here, at work. I was just walking along and twisted and boom. Pain. Nothing special. It was just the straw that broke the Betsy’s back. I did a forward fold to try to make things better and it only made it worse.

Sometimes they ask why it happened. I’m in pretty good shape, so they are surprised. I was too. It happened because I have scoliosis. It is very slight, and it has developed over time. Contrary to popular opinion, and the opinion of my coworkers and the patrons, scoliosis can develop. It isn’t always something you have as a child. So my back goes left, and the disc went right.

Then they ask if I am better, and I say I am because I am going to a great chiropractor. Sometimes they ask who. When I tell them, it seems like the majority of them go to him and agree how wonderful he is. Those who don’t go to him or have never been to a chiropractor have further opinions. My favorite – one lady who told me that I should be wearing a back brace. I told her that it is really important to move the discs. If you don’t get movement, the discs will get weaker. OK, she said – then are you doing the exercises your doctor told you to do? This is funny because she went from “don’t move at all” to “make sure you move.” Pick one. I assured her that I do yoga and water aerobics, so I’m good.

Others have said “make sure you don’t go too much.” – going on the popularly held opinion that chiropractors try to get you to come way too much so they can make more money. I point out that when I got braces, it took four years for the doctor to realign my teeth. Why should I expect my back to be any faster? They agree that I have a good point there.

I’m amazed how my business is their business.

That is part of my job. We get to know each other. We have a weird relationship, that is friendly, but we aren’t friends. It is hard to know where the boundaries are sometimes. There are certainly patrons that I have become friends with. I even married one. But there are others who think they are my friend because they see me every week and I smile. But they don’t get that I smile because I have to. It is part of my job. Just because I’m friendly doesn’t mean I’m their friend.