The Furious Spinner

Awaken too early after a late night. Go outside to check the garden before the onslaught of the sun. Slight breeze. Tiny zucchinis sprouted huge golden orange flowers overnight. My pumpkin plants still have no tiny pumpkins, despite two weeks of flower after flower. I really want to see the Luna pumpkins, the white ones, come up. I talk to the plants as I water the greens, zucchinis, pumpkins, potatoes, and herbs. I wish I could smell. My rosemary bush moves slightly in the wind. Damselflies shiver from arugula to arugula leaf, delicate and ethereal-looking; I know they’re predators, and I’m glad they’re trolling for bugs in my garden.

I stand on the grass, baring my soles, and breathe in the various directions and elements. Greet the day.

Inside again, I turn on the dryer to finish a load of clothes I began yesterday. Then I fry an egg and eat it and two slices of toast with six fresh garlic cloves crushed over them.

I start a post, then call Linda. She finally agreed to let me come over and help her yesterday. I’m going again this morning. I walk to see Mario at work first. It’s going to be hot again today. Can’t complain. Still isn’t Arizona hot. Crows fly overhead. I wave a greeting.

Mario and I meet on the sidewalk in front of one of the county offices. We kiss, grab hands, and walk to the post office. Nothing but junk. I walk with Mario back to the library. One of the staff motions me over to them and asks me if I have any time today to get a card for the librarian’s birthday. I say, sure, I’ll do it now. So I walk home and get my wallet. This is one of the reasons I love living in a small town. I can be anonymous if I like, but when I want to be part of a community, it’s right there. I walk down to the grocery store and buy a card. Back to the library. The sun is so bright. I sign the card, then give it up. Something about the rhythm and routine of this morning feels nice, grounding.

Home. I try to finish the post. I have a library order due today too. I need to get on some kind of schedule. I’ve got two loads of laundry to finish. None of it matters. Linda matters.

I get into the hot car and start it up. I close my eyes. I love Linda, but I don’t like her house. I often have allergy problems there, plus it’s just creepy to me. She’s got trouble with mice. Yesterday they took several dead baby mice out of her daughter’s dresser. I told Mario that not only could I never wear any clothes from that dresser drawer, the dresser itself would have to go, and then I’d have to burn down the house. (I had some weird thing happen with me and mice at my grandmother’s house, so I don’t like meeces in houses.)

The mice and dirt and clutter I will just have to tolerate. As for the allergies, I tell myself, Maybe not this time; maybe my body will shake off the allergies. Om Tara, Tutare, ture soha, I chant as I pull away from the house and drive down the winding state highway and then up the winding road to Linda’s farm. The dogs come out to greet me.

Don’t touch me, I tell them; I love ya but get away from me. I never figured out where I got the poison oak last year and I don’t want a repeat of that episode. The goose honks. Swallows dive in the sun-drenched meadow north of the house.

Inside it is dark and cluttered and dirty. Saying it is dirty is an observation not a judgment. I’m sure someone coming into my house would think it was dirty too. Our own dirt is tolerable. I have to try with all my might to suppress all my weird cleanliness stuff. No I’m not going to get the hanta virus. I forgot my gloves! Oh well, I’ll put bandages on my cuts so that I don’t pick up blood poisoning or anything.

More importantly than any of my neuroses is Linda who stands with the help of her walker and says good morning. Pain has etched itself into the wrinkles on her face. But I try to keep the distress off my face, and we set to work. She tells me what to do, and I do it. This jar goes here, that bag there. I help make her something to eat, but she doesn’t eat it. She has told me she does eat and she’s so skinny because of the cancer not because she doesn’t eat and she wished people would treat her like an adult and know she does eat....Breathe, Linda, breathe...

So I say, I know you are an adult, but Linda you’ve had two bites of your toast.

I water her plants. I’m sure I’m doing it wrong. She is very particular about how things should be done. I’ve seen many women who are like this. There is a wrong way and a right way to do things around the house. To do anything, actually. This means that no one else can do it right. I try to have as few things possible that are the right way or the wrong way. For instance, nearly every married woman I know complains that her husband doesn’t do enough around the house or that he does it wrong. The towels should be folded with the crease here, not the crease there. I say, “Who says your way is right? If you want the work done, let them do it their way.” (I can hear my mother in my head right now saying, yes, and you’re just so perfect, aren’t you?)

I don’t question anything as Linda has me clean out the refrigerator. She has to see everything and then she decides whether it should be tossed or not. I make noises as I throw out moldy and decaying veggies and fruits. She looks distressed, so I explain that half the fun of doing anything is making a noise about it. So she joins me in my groans. (Remember, the Western way is to be stoic and never even acknowledge any ickiness let alone complain about it.)

Trying to get Linda to throw anything out is a challenge. I don’t want her to feel stressed by my presence, however, so I don’t try to convince her of anything. I do screech and jump away from the watermelon which is white with mold; she had been planning to eat it. I take that sucker outside.

Linda is in excruciating pain. I rub her back, but I can’t feel any mets. I breathe deeply as I massage her bony back, trying to let my emotions flow easily in and out—I just want to sob. She hardly has any muscle on her body any more.

I haven’t done any powwowing in a couple of years—except on myself sometimes. Since 9/11? Not sure. But I look around for a stone (mine is in my purse in the car), find one on her dresser, and return to her in the kitchen. As I move the stone counterclockwise, I chant, “Hair and hide, skin and bone, have no more pain than this stone.” I know this isn’t exactly how the chant goes, but I sing it anyway. Then I add my own chant, “Linda, this is how your will is done. Every day under the sun, every night under moon or stars you are healer and you are healed. Everywhere you go is haven, every place you stay is home. My words and hands dissolve disease and sickness: gone for now and ever more. This is how your will is done every day under the sun, every night under stars and moon. I am healer and you are healed.” (This chant came to me many years ago when I was staying in Santa Fe.)

I do this chant three times, twice widdershins, once clockwise. She is very still as I chant. Then we continue our work around the house. At one point as I’m putting away various bags, she tells me the good sacks go here. I say, “Bad sacks, good sacks.” She finds this quite funny and bends over laughing. I grin. I have been missing her laugh.

After several hours, I drive her to Hood River to the acupuncturist for the pain in her back. The day is so clear and warm. Usually after so many days of heat, the Gorge is filled with haze. Somehow we start talking about manners. She remembers she was taught “good manners” by her father who would whack her hand if she reached across the table, for instance. Last night she made dinner for a man who has been helping her on the farm; he ate it very quickly. So she told him that she knew someone who had made a big celebratory meal for someone once and they had wolfed it done like a pig at a trough and the person who cooked the meal was quite offended.

I have to keep from laughing as she tells me this. This is such a great example of the Western way of communicating. Instead of saying, “Geez Louise, slow down and enjoy yourself a little,” a Westerner tells this elaborate story to let someone know they might be offended.

Plus, she’s telling a grown man how he should be eating.

I say, “You know, some people just eat quickly. It doesn’t mean the way they’re eating is wrong. Some people can’t stand the sound of chewing, so they eat more quickly. Some people don’t like the sound of silverware on their teeth. I think common courtesy is great. But these rules about what is right and what is wrong just separates people, makes them judgmental.”

“But there is a right and wrong way to pass food around the table,” she says.

“Who says? Who said one way was right and one way was wrong? Someone just made that up. And what about other cultures? When you eat with people from other cultures some things are polite for them that might not be polite to us. Belching for instance. Or in some places if you clean your plate, the host will keep filling it up because they assume you are still hungry; where in other places leaving something on your plate means you didn’t like the food or you’re still hungry.”

“That’s true,” she says. “I guess it’s being able to adapt. I just want my daughter to have good manners so she can be with rich people and not feel awkward.”

“Of course you teach your children good manners and common courtesy,” I say. “I’m just saying that when we have it in our heads that only this way is right or only that way is right, we’re sitting in judgment all of the time. I have so many weirdnesses myself that I try not to add too many more. I don’t want to be out having dinner with someone and cringe because they’re passing a dish around the wrong way.”

She nods. “You know, the pain in my back is much better.”

At the office, I get out her walker from the back seat. I am sneezing and my nose is running and swelling.

“I wonder what is bothering you here?” Linda asks as she slowly goes into the office.

I shrug. She doesn’t realize that my reactions to things are nearly always delayed. It’s her house that’s bothering me, but I don’t want to tell her that. I drive to the grocery store and do a bit of shopping. She wanted me to go to Wal-Mart and get bird seed, but I said no, we don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I look for bird seed at the grocery store, but they’ve only got 10 lb bags.

I pick Linda up and we head for the bridge to take us to the Washington side. Linda starts telling me how to drive and I snap at her.

“I am fifty years old, Linda.” First time I’ve said that out loud. “I’m not your seventeen year old daughter.”

“But you’re not used to driving here.”

“I lived here for seven freaking years! Don’t treat me like a child.”

“But if you’d kept going there your rear end would have been sticking out. I always try to leave enough room.”

“There would have been plenty of room!”

I’m so pissed—mostly because I’m yelling at a sick person. Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut? I also suddenly remember how often I say stuff like this to Mario about his driving. I’ve really got to stop doing that.

We talk all the way home, Linda mostly, about her father who died a few years ago. My nose runs nonstop. I drop Linda off at her place and then drive home. I’m so miserable I want to scream.

I go into our cool house. Mario comes to greet me in his blue apron, grinning. I smile and hug him. Within minutes he serves me a dinner of rice with veggies. It’s so colorful and delicious.

“By the way, honey,” I say. “I’m really going to try to stop telling you how to drive. If I do it, please yell at me and remind me how long you have been driving. Linda was trying to tell me how to drive and I yelled at her. She scared the shit out of me by telling me to stop. She wants to control so much.” I shake my head. “I have really got to stop trying to control her controlling behavior.”

He laughs.

After dinner, I go into the kitchen and make blueberry cake for my guy. While it bakes, I call Linda.

“I think whatever you did really helped my back,” Linda say. “It got other things moving too.”

“That’s great,” I say.

“I’ll have to come over every day for your treatment!”

I feel a twinge of anxiety. She thinks I can save her? I wish I could. But I’ve never succeeded in saving anyone, even myself. I breathe deeply. Just go with the flow, sugar. What happens happens.

She seems cheerful. She probably doesn’t even remember me yelling at her. If she does, she doesn’t care. That’s one of the reasons we’re such good friends. We can be cross with one another and it’s all okay. Just like a happily married couple. I love her to pieces.

I sit on the couch. Exhausted. My allergies are starting to calm down.

“You’ve had quite a day,” Mario says as he folds the clothes I left on the bench.

“Well, you worked all day!”

He picks up a towel. I watch his beautiful long fingers move deftly as he folds the towel. Just perfect.

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.