The view from here

I had a really lovely Thanksgiving this year.

So many things to be thankful for: almost-grown kids who not only speak to me, but made the drive up to Austin to hang out with all of us old folks; still married (I know!) to Mr. Wonderful; good health; and at last, feeling nearly at peace with myself and most people.

An old friend I'd lost touch with for years caught up with me for coffee a few weeks ago. My friend noticed that I seemed content and happy, and reconnecting was like "finding a cozy old pair of slippers I'd forgotten in the back of my closet."

I felt ok with being "old slippers." I'm letting my hair go gray.

Contentment is good for the soul, I suppose, but bad for artistic output.

Isn't some angst or perturbation required to push a person to do...what? Great things? Create art? Mend the world's ills? Is that what my grandiose little ego wants me to think is my mission?

What about living a happy life and cherishing the people who populate it? Isn't that enough?

Maybe it's that old-time religion in me, making me feel that reveling in a life of simple joys is somehow selfish. There's a suspicion of contentment -- serenity means you're not paying attention to the evils in the world.

Pakistan. Darfur. Squalor. Oppression. Poverty. Dancing With The Stars.

The horror is out there. And there is more for me to do.

But feeling my son hug me so tight when he walked in the door at Thanksgiving felt like heaven on earth.

And at the end of a strenuous practice, relaxing in savasana on my yoga mat, my upturned palm nesting inside my mate's...heaven.

Watching the rain fall and wind blow across the Wimberley hills while I sip hot chocolate by the window, even more heaven.

"As the fly bangs against the window attempting freedom while the door stands open, so we bang against death ignoring heaven."
Doug Horton

In Guinea Pig We Trust

Back from honeymooning in Peru. Happy to report I did not fall off a mountain, did not die of altitude sickness (despite feeling for a while like my eyeballs would explode from the pressure), and was not bitten by a llama. I did, however, learn the difference between an alpaca and a llama, and added this to my list of party tricks. You've been warned.

In Peru, the national delicacy, their delicious dish, is Guinea Pig. You can walk down Cuzco's cobblestone streets and find dozens of sidewalk cafes charming as any on the Seine or along Ringstrasse. Proudly emblazoned on the chalkboard menus out front: "Baked Guinea Pig."

Oh so many reasons to be a vegetarian.

Now, the gustatory delights of Guinea Pig aside, I also learned that the rural people of Peru ascribe amazing properties to this little rodent.

Hillary's health reforms have not reached Peru yet. But even if they could afford it, most rural people live so far away from a hospital, any serious ailment would either improve or kill them long before they reached one.

No problem! You got a Guinea Pig, you're in business.

Apparently the procedure goes this way: The practitioner takes a live Guinea Pig, holds it in one hand, and waves it over you. Like being wanded by an airport security screener, but with a Guinea Pig. Next (sensitive viewers may not want to read the next bit), they slice open the Guinea Pig to observe its insides. If the furry little beast had a bad heart, the human patient gets heart medicine, bad Guinea kidneys, the person gets kidney potions, etc. In Peru, "MRI" stands for Manual Rodent Inspection.

I did not have the Guinea Pig test, but here's a picture of me at Machu Picchu, soaking up the positive energy reported to emanate from Sacred Rock.

It's very popular with the tourists, who can't wait to get their little shots of positive energy courtesy of this monumental Inkan stone, which just happens to be shaped like...

One last little bit of Peru lore about the Guinea Pig's role in evangelizing the Inkas. In Lima's big cathedral and Cuzco's equally impressive 16th-century sanctuary, are massive paintings of The Last Supper. In both paintings, on the table in front of Our Savior and the disciples, on a platter and with its four feet pointing heavenward, is...

"Take, eat. For this is my Guinea Pig, which was broken for you."

Recycled

Two weeks from tomorrow, I take that long walk from single 40-something mother of mostly grown kids to empty nester newly wed.

Despite my obvious practice at this, it's harder than you might think finding the right dress for my fourth wedding.

"Fourth wedding" sounds ghastly, so I prefer to say I'm marrying my third husband. That at least sounds a bit less Elizabeth-Tayloresque. My second husband was stretched over two marriages, so this is my third husband, fourth marriage.

OK, now back to the important thing. The dress.

I walked miles in malls and searched online versions of those same stores. I'm too young for the MOB dresses (mother of the bride) and "dignified"--and I hope you appreciate the humor in uttering "fourth wedding" and "dignified" in the same breath--enough not to wear something clearly too young for me.

It all looks like Briteny Spears prom dresses or something Aunt Esther might have worn to a fancy church meeting on Sanford and Son.

I told my mother I felt like those paper bags of bananas you buy at the grocery store, five pounds for a dollar. Not old and rotten enough to throw out, but close enough to going bad that you've gotta get them off the shelf. Pronto.

What's the right packaging for that?

Friends who know me and my Mr. Wonderful's green leanings, teased me about finding a recycled dress. And I DID find one. Made of recycled plastic and silk tulle, looked like a cross between Japanese paper and lace, and dotted with Swarvorski crystals. At $7,000, that was a big fat I don't think so.

My friend Doug (the "flower girl" for my upcoming wedding) found my dress on bluefly.com. Through Internet magic--also where Mr. Wonderful found his Ralph Lauren tuxedo and our platinum wedding bands (on eBay--natch!)--Doug found the dress. Not at all the dress I'd imagined: something tailored, understated, sensible and befitting someone who wasn't exactly new at this. Nope. Not that. Instead, we found a glamorous, romantic, formal gown.

Before I found the dress, I whined to Mr. Wonderful that it was impossible to find the appropriate thing for this occasion. "I can't wear a big, dumb wedding dress," I simpered.

"Why not? You're getting married," he said, very gently and sweetly, melting me into tears immediately.

Thank God finding love has nothing to do with deserving it. But maybe keeping it has everything to do with appreciating it. And I do. I will.

I am getting married. Me. Again.

To the sweetest, kindest, most trustworthy man I've ever known. Well, except for the man who'll take me down that long walk into my future married life, my Dad. Who, by the way, loves Mr. Wonderful almost as much as I do. Heck, Dad proposed to my groom long before I did.

"I look forward to the day I can call you my son-in-law," he said, about 18 months ago.

So, the dress is new. Only the bride is recycled.

NOLA, we hardly know ya

Last weekend, I visited New Orleans with a group of earnest, upper-middle class, mostly middle-aged folks from Houston, plus friends from Fla. and Colo. We worked our overpadded behinds off mucking out houses and doing various "do-gooder" things. We'd come to help the bowed but unbroken people in the Lower 9th and Gentilly.

Too many stories to tell just one.

Like the springer spaniel whose owners left him behind but the attic stairs down in case floodwater came in the house, thinking they'd be gone a day or two. The pup survived 3 weeks in the attic, with water up to the ladder's top step and no food. Today, the re-plumped pup is understandably wary of strangers, but also, a great testament to the will to survive.

I think about the house where most of the contents were gone but a calendar still hung on the wall, the page for August, 2005 with each day marked off up to the 28th. There were a couple of batons left in the closet, the girl was a twirler. A rosary was left on the window sill. When we put it out on the curb with a pile of trash, we didn't realize the black box, about the size of a gallon gas can, held cremated remains of a long-gone family member. But one team member found an identical box, so that sent us out to dig through the pile and retrieve the other one.

Ashes to ashes.

Monday, my first day back at work, I was still having trouble adjusting to my normal life. The focused, intense physical labor, the closeness of my team members, the emotional impact of being immersed in the inescapable reality of mortality and impermanence--it's hard to reenter the everyday world after that. I miss them. Sweating and getting Sheetrock dust in my eyes and itching from fiberglass insulation and working harder than I knew I could. I miss it.

I looked around and realized my personal office at work is the size of a FEMA trailer that an entire family lives in. The trailers still fill parks and line residential streets. About 12,000 families still live in them, and sometimes get tossed out of them in the middle of the night by the authorities for flimsy reasons. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17575595/

When you meet the people rebuilding their homes in Gentilly, or step into a FEMA trailer and take a good look around, which takes about 2 seconds, you realize this is America, too. We want to think those people still living in FEMA trailers are different from us. They are the victims of their corrupt government. Or lazy. Or another regrettable fruit of ignorance and poverty. Anything to console yourself that they are not like us. Anything to let you hold them at arm's length and tell yourself what happened to them can't happen to you.

But, if I lost my job, my home, all my possessions, and the insurance money was not immediately forthcoming, how long could I afford to live in something better than this? And what if this same fate struck all of my immediate and extended family at the same time? Where would I turn for help?