Goodbye 2012... Hello 2013!

Blog160:

New Year's Eve!

Boom!  Crack!  Rattattat!

Firecrackers' popping there and here

Crowd neighborhoods with litter and foggy smoke

Soon as dusk turn to early evening darkness ...

New Year's Eve!

Streets everywhere come alive and merriment begins

Festive lights compete in color and brightness

While drum roll sporadically reverberates

Its piped sounds through wall crevices and cracks ...

New Year's Eve!

Outside ... excited teen boys led by fathers and friends

Brave their first attempt at lighting fireworks

While young and old women protect the very young

From getting close to the splintering, cracking fires ...

New Year's Eve!

Equipped with their whistles and paper-made blowers

Children push air in their noisemakers as hard as they can

Mixing up noises with tricycle drivers' horn tooting

As they snake in and find their riders' ways to homes ...

New Year's Eve!

Inside the house, Mother calmly boils water

For tea and chocolate milk that will be served

Along with native cakes, pancit and cheese sandwiches

In yet another Media Noche meal this last day of 2012 ...

Welcome, 2013!

New Year's Day pops in at 12:01 midnight

Amidst second by second counting ...10-9-8-7-6-5-4 ...

And cheery exchanges of best wishes and hopes

Juxtaposed with nostalgic singing of 'Auld Lang Syne' ...

Welcome, 2013!

Whatever unfolds - challenges or triumphs

Whatever comes our way - tribulations or joys

Whatever paths we step in - smooth or rough

2013 makes its entry into our lives, ready or not!

Colds' Blues ...

Blog159:

It isn’t a picnic to be run down by illness.  Illness of any kind doesn’t only affect our internal weather, but it also prevents us from managing a possibly smooth day of routinely-done chores or projects we want to complete.

In spite of the monetary expense, our want to get better from any physical un-wellness moves us to seek medical attention.   I had no choice but to do just that.  My recently acquired colds accompanied furiously by a nasty cough, overrunning nose, and face-contorting sinusitis have all gotten me grouchy and impatient.  I have also begun to dislike my internal weather, so … there - a trip to the doctor’s office I took!  The wait at any doctor’s office is never a picnic, but that one particular trip took the icing --- almost a our-hour wait!  Before she saw me in her office, the med doctor also aggravatingly, asked for several tests to be done: blood platelets’ analysis, x-ray, and urinalysis.  I was furious! I was overwhelmingly irritated because I thought the tests were unnecessary, and irrelevant to my need from cough relief!  After going through the motions of ear, throat, chest check (of some kind!), she prescribed eight medicines, complete with instructions of how they must be taken in intervals.

The doctor’s office wait was not the most irritating, mind you.  After taking only two doses of recommended medications, I developed rashes --- reaction to the medication, that ‘til now give me over-the-hill discomfort!  I should just have listened to old, tested remedies of water/fruit and rest therapy.  This irksome rash all over my body tests my patience!  I now wish for a magic wand that could whisk away this annoying rash … as quickly as it came!

What lesson did I learn from this experience?  Take three Aspirins, take regular fluids, and then just stay in bed.  From now on, no more trips to a doctor’s office over colds!

Connect & Participate

Blog155:

          Unless the crowd is totally estranged from one another, a conversation is usually a path to goodwill exchange.  Within a circle of folks gathered, a conversation usually begins because it is what civil people do.  Just what happens when a conversation focus is exhausted?  Of course, there is a lull … a let-up … that creeps in, especially if those present in the crowd aren’t quick to build on conversation cues.

          Whenever I’m in a circle requiring response to what’s spoken, I listen in on what’s said, then I try to connect with it an experience I’ve had in the recent or distant past, a related thought I know adding to what’s said, a question I have … so to understand  and/or clarify a point.  I don’t know what happens in someone else’s mind.  I simply engage in what I know so I don’t get left out.  Not doing anything may project dullness, social ineptness of which I do not want to be associated.  Call it a lack of confidence if you wish.  I really don’t care or do I?  And why is someone’s perception of importance?

          Participation in a conversation is a simple expectation in a circle.  While it can be avoided, it is best not to.  Participation is an act of good-will sharing in a crowd, even with strangers.  Face-to-face encounter is an invitation to become a part of, and it almost forces you to fit into a place … that which is something you can get comfortable, take on, and connect.  Even when the conversation is focused on something which you uphold is private, there is always something you could share without compromising that which you hold private.  For instance, in a gathering of women speaking on the subject of rearing children, a single lady who has not yet experienced caring for children could always talk about her sibling’s upbringing around the home, or her own parents’ experiences with child care.  She doesn’t have to be left out.  She doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.

          Getting engaged in a conversation is a brain challenge of kind.  What you do know about what’s being spoken about is often a quick-adrenalin run that forces you to search your mind quickly of that one related event, one related experience- personal or vicarious, which could add or enrich the conversation.  You could surprise those in the circle who may know or not know you very well that you have something pertinent and relevant to share.  I’m not a cook or chef, and I know very little about food prep.  When a conversation about food comes around once in a while,   I search for what’ I’ve recently read from a magazine or what I’ve viewed from a TV cooking prep channel.    I also recall my favorite tastes and observations about food prep and what makes a recipe palatable.  I don’t have to be a wiz.  I don’t have to be a practicing food tech person.  I have to only be willing to share what I know at the right time about food.  That way, I don’t feel left out, thought about as disinterested or dull!

          Visiting within family circles and friendships or acquaintances have force me recently to be in the receiving or giving end, conversation-wise.  It gives me comfort that sharing what I know or what I could add to the topics on hand at the right time could also comfort those around me who are simply themselves making familiar, friendly connections!

Sore Cold

Blog 149:

Head spins

Throbbing pain nags from shoulders

Dry cough invades chest airflow

Runny nose irritates every minute or so

Swollen throat makes painful gulping

What is it with you, persisting Cold

That intrudes in my possible perfect days?

You exhaust my body energy!

You debilitate my being!

You hold me down in this sickbed!

Inner ear pain joins the throng of hurt-filled head

Watery eyes blurr vision

Mucus aggravates cough

General body malaise spreads

Until all it could do is lie in that cradling bed

Shoo, Cold ... bother me no more!

Be gone from my being, Cold!

Let my ears and eyes rest from these excretions

Have mercy on my throat and nose- let go of these foreign irritations

Free my body of these germs that imprison the rest of me!

Clutter Battle!

Blog 151:

        Have you lately been around a place seemingly familiar ...glanced through the layout of things, then looked away as quickly as you can or closed your eyes because you do not like what you see?  Such a place might have potential for fine-looking and breathable, peaceful  things, but because items have collected in places here and there, without respect for order, balance or organization, it had become chaotic?  Time and again, I have, at my mother's living space!

        Two weeks after I got re-acclimated into the swing and things around my house that Mother temporarily occupies, I began to again be uneasy.  Uneasy ... not for anything seriously important, but because I just have never approved of how Mother had kept,or not kept things.  For some reason,  she time and again collected items that to me were unimportant or doesn't serve a legitimate purpose.  She repeatedly reasoned that this or that item bundled and stashed, would either go to a charitable cause or a relative unfortunately not able to get such material things as clothing, footwear, appliance (working/notworking), toys her grandchildren have outgrown, kitchen or dining ware, etcetera!

        As many times as we'ved talked over her practices, nothing had sunk in, it seemed.  I could not think of an explanation other than perhaps, Mother had continued to live in a much older time .. that of an economic depression and war-time era she lived through in the past.  An era may be that was far removed from easy access to replacing things when they got broken or chipped, rather than recycling them over and over until they actually fll apart.   Around the house, there were binsand boxes filled with thingsthat just stay in them --- for years,  baskets of brown paper and shopping bags, canisters bursting in the seams of cabinets that could be properly used to organize items of essential use ... small and big items that crowd the entire house.  Mother also had kept things that she hoped she still could make out of  bits and pieces of fabric, along with sewing items ... zippers, buttons, trimmings ... saved from almost tattered clothes that  for avery long time, she would not part with just because , in her words, 'they have use still.'

        Every time I come home, I'd restrain myself from saying anything, or doing something to clear up 'the clutter', but I just now realized how pointless my exercise had been.  Mother would not change her practices.  She would not consider re-arranging anything because the clutter had become part of her internal, psychological system as she liked them.  There definitely is something that the clutter, from my viewpoint, is serving, which I would never understand.  They have become her treasures ... her comfort ... her assurance that she would not, by any circumstance live without!

At 87 ...

Blog152:

At 87, she moves

As if just yesterday, she was 40 or 45

That I could remember ...

Many waking days, at 4 or 5 AM, she rises to start the stove

And boil water, or rice

So that her son, he himself an early riser,

Could have something warm and solid in his stomach

Before he heads out for work at his wokplace, a multinational-managed plant

At 87, she moves in the kitchen

To get meals prepped and made

As if just yesteryears, she was 30 or 35

And my siblings and I were just rising from night's sleep

And preparing to begin our journeys in school ...

At 87, she moves around the house

Taking care of this and that ... living esentials, she says ...

She lists what needs to be bought from the marketplace

She looks over what items of clothing must get to the laundry

She takes callsfrom friends and family and shares her thoughts

At 87, she moves

As if just yesterday, she was 40 or 45

That I could remember ...

Only supported by her walking cane

She navigates the roads and the neighborhood on her own,

Or accompanied by a good-hearted tricycle driver

So she could get her medications from the pharmacy

And pick up fruit and vegetables from her favorite grocer

At 87, she stands tall though a bit weakened

By her old bones, some of which were dislocated

From an accidental fall many moons ago

At 87, she reminisces of WWII experiences

She glimpses back on photographs of old and new

Family and friends ... parted, moved, living close by

At 87, she picks up a magnifying glass to clearly see

With her teary-eyed and degenerating vision

Words, pictures and thoughts from magazines or the paper

At 87, Hermie doesn't show slowing down

She independently thrives, lives her day-to-day life

Unceasing to give up control over her weakening being!

Almost Christmas

Blog153:

Almost Christmas ...

Out there ... people are rushing still

Looking for bargain, useful, fanciful presents

Hoping it surrprises a loved one,  a favored friend, a neighbor ...

Almost Christmas ...

Down the street ... soon a day darkensto night

Street lights, neon lights and festive lights glitter

And brighten one dull , unimpressive homes in the block

Almost Christmas ...

Children patiently wait to open presents

And let out "OH's and Ah's

Over items wished for and filled

Almost Christmas ...

Carolers young and old sing favorite season songs

And wait for rewards ... spare coins, candy,cookies or the like

Almost Christmas ...

I am growing weary and sad

Being absent from the presence of very dear loved ones ...