Singularly Happy

It's nine o'clock on Saturday night of Fair week and I'm standing in line for my once a year elephant ear. I limit myself to one a year so I don't balloon up like the animal for which this fried and sugared mouth watering platter of bread dough is named. Looking around at the Fair goers, it's obvious people are happy. Talking, laughing adults, teenagers roaming in herds, kids bundled against the chill of the night, held in the arms of Fair weary parents, weary but satisfied. It's been a good Fair. It's the third week in August, Fair week on the island. Summer's last big event before back to school preparations begin and Labor Day approaches.

I've just come from the beer garden where people are drinking beer, wine, wine margaritas. I've had half a beer myself. The music is good, lively, people are dancing. It's the last hour of the last night of the Fair and there's an intense energy surging through the dancing crowd. It's the last frantic, fleeting chance to get that final jolt of Fair energy for this year. Jam has been sealed in jars, entered, tasted and judged. Livestock has been raised, entered, judged, and auctioned. Wool has been sheared, carded, spun, and woven. Rides have been ridden. Corndogs have been eaten. Fudge has been melted on tongues. Zucchini have been raced. It's the last hour of the last night of the Fair and I am waiting in line for my elephant ear alone. But things are just as they should be. 

Friday night of Fair week I went to see Eat, Pray, Love, all by myself. That was a good way to see that movie. Having read the book, I knew the story well. It was luxurious to walk around town in solitude, feeling perfectly safe, walking home, then on the spur of the moment, at nine pm, when many were going home to bed, jumping in the car and dashing to the movies. Something wonderfully self indulgent about buying a popcorn sprinkled with brewers yeast and picking a seat in the middle of the back row, the theater almost empty because of the Fair. Waiting for the lights to dim, the curtain to open, the movie to begin. Enjoying my own company. Perfectly congruent with the theme of the story. Is this my Bali? I thought to myself when the movie was done. No, it's too cold here for that. Is this my figurative Bali? Maybe. Like Liz Gilbert, I'm remembering who I am in this new place I call home. 

Feeling much more like I belong than I did last year, now I wait in line for my elephant ear. It's the last hour of the last night of the Fair. There's a nip in the air that says “Fall's here.” How can that be? Summer just arrived. Last year I did the same thing, leaving my elephant ear till last. Waiting until the last minute to buy it, the anticipation of it kept all week in my right front jeans pocket with my Fair pass. Putting off temptation till that final hour. Flirting with disappointment if I wait too long. A little Fair food roulette. I find my excitement where I can these days. There'll be no Eat, Pray, Love excitement of departure from this place, the thing I sometimes fantasize. Except in the darkness of the movie theater. This is my Bali. The place I face my fears. The place I plant my flag. The place I remember who I am. Perhaps the place I find love. The place I eat my elephant ear, and it is...delicious.

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© M.E. Rollins

Gratitude

One day, back in 1996, my beloved little car was stolen from the Washington Square parking lot while I took a few hours out of my busy life to spend too much money on clothes that were ill suited to me in yet another desperate, knee jerk attempt to better my life. Not the first ill fated move on my part. I've done lots of things in my life that worked, and more than a few that didn't.

The sad side of this story is I loved my little Honda and was shocked and devastated someone could in one simple move, take my mostly well ordered life and ding it up quite badly along with my car. My little burgundy hatch back was later recovered across town, trashed and much worse for the wear of a very long joy ride. Somewhat guiltily, since I'd loved my little car so much, I took the insurance settlement and sent the little Honda to public auction, It felt like a betrayal of a family member, but it had to be done. 

The upside to this event was I bought with the insurance settlement and the meager gain we'd recently had in our savings account, a bigger, gently used, more comfortable car. A much needed improvement. For years I'd been driving my dad, now in his eighties, to a lovely adult daycare program where he was able to make friends, sing songs that were familiar, join in group activities that fit even his stroke addled brain, and where he could have a little independence for a few hours a week. 

I really wanted this program to continue to be available to my dad as he loved going so much, and the local lift bus was not well matched to his infirmities. Twice a week, I drove from my home in Southwest Portland to the apartment he shared with my mother in another part of town, helped my strapping, but disabled dad into my tiny car, and drove to Trinity Episcopal Church in Northwest Portland where the adult daycare program was offered.

Once there, I pushed, pulled, coaxed him out of the car and up the steps into the building, returning four hours later to do the whole thing in reverse. Just as I made the switch to the slightly used, but much more comfortable car, my sisters and I came to the conclusion we could no longer keep up the grueling schedule that made my dad's trips to adult daycare possible. For our own sakes, we sadly admitted that while the program was good for both my parents, our own lives were suffering too much in the process. It was one of those difficult decisions we all have to make eventually. 

The new car did, however make it possible for me to transport my dad to a nursing home near my own home for periods of respite for my mother, who was also showing the signs of wear and tear so often associated with spousal caregivers who themselves are of advancing age. I was devastated to see my once physically strong, mentally sharp father, medicated and confused, receiving mediocre care in what was supposed to be a top notch facility, while we struggled to make better arrangements for him.

My sisters all contributed to the effort, varying amounts at varying times, according to what we could each give at the time. I made almost daily visits to his temporary digs in an effort to ease his suffering, since he was by this time quite demented and unable to do

much for himself. I was, along with my sisters, determined to find a better arrangement for my dad, and eventually we did.

But before we reached that eventuality, I started to be a casualty myself. Years of balancing home, career, being a parent, keeping a marriage afloat, along with care for my aging parents was taking a toll. This new arrangement, although far from perfect, did however get us through another phase of my dad's declining health. In 1999, when my father was in the final stage of a very long and productive life, it became clear he needed the kind of care that could be provided only by moving full time to a nursing home.

By then I'd really had it, and that's when the panic attacks of which I've spoken in this column began. Fortunately, shortly thereafter, my dad was moved to a nursing home where he could get the proper care he needed, my sisters and I could focus more attention on our mother who was now in need of a lot of support as well, and I could get help for what had become debilitating panic attacks.

You know, looking back on that time, what's happening in my life now, the current challenges I'm facing, don't seem all that bad. I am mostly only responsible for myself now. I have some money worries, and I've had some medical issues to deal with lately. But compared to managing the life I had ten years ago, this is much easier. It's important to remember that. Especially as I lay here with a heating pad on my back, wondering how I'm going to make things work out for myself.

I've got a ways to go before I reach the age my parents were when they really started to decline. I'm still able bodied, most of the time. I still have my full mental faculties, most of the time. I have a couple of gripe groups with beer associated where I can vent and laugh. I live in a beautiful place. For now I have money in the bank and food on the table. And I have wonderful friends. My folks were family rich and I am too, but they didn't focus so much on friendships. For me, if I need help, I'll have the benefit of a combination of family and friends. And that's good. Heck, it's more than good, it's friggin great. How lucky am I? Life is good.

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© M.E. Rollins

Mosh Pit

When I was young, I loved music, but never quite made it to the kind of concert where one could ride on a mosh pit. It always looked fun, but scary. A lot of trust involved there, trusting the crowd not to drop you. The other day I suddenly got it into my head to write about mosh pits as metaphor for life. Like most of my writing ideas, this one came seemingly out of nowhere, rising to the surface of my brain like words rising to the surface of a magic eight ball. Such ideas usually come when I'm trying the least, while doing the dishes, taking a shower, or when first waking in the morning. So I keep pads of paper and pencils all over my house, since without a notation, those best writing ideas disappear, slipping back into the dark, murky water of my brain, often never to appear again.

The pencil instead of a pen next to my notepad comes from years of being an architect. I never lost my love of a good pencil. It used to be pencil holders with leads I sharpened myself. A real draftsman can sharpen a pencil on a piece of sandpaper in a pinch. Ah, I miss the good old days. Now I use mechanical pencils of all sorts, collected over the years, that hold .7 mm HB leads. It appears you can take the woman out of architecture, but you can't take architecture out of the woman. It's been seven years since I closed the door on my one person architecture firm, but I still consider myself an architect. Architecture has been such a large part of my life.

Like most people, I went into my chosen field because I had the natural talent for it, and a desire to do something good, something bigger than myself in the world. And, if I'm really honest, it was also because I was tired of making minimum wage, managing offices for men who were making the big bucks while I and the other women held down the fort, made coffee, fended off unwanted advances, not career advances if you know what I mean, and kept our mouths shut in order to keep our jobs.

I was a timid rebel. I wasn't willing to be a pee-on the rest of my life, and I had a brain I knew could be put to much better use than it had been in the jobs I'd held up to that point. The only thing lacking for me was self confidence. I had virtually none of that. However, through a fortunate series of circumstances, I was lifted up and handed off from one caring soul to another, held aloft like a rock and roll fan in a mosh pit until one day, I found myself a licensed, practicing architect. Teacher after teacher and friend upon friend gave me just the right type and amount of encouragement. Although I had to do the footwork, there is no way I would have made it through without the cheering crowd slam dancing to the beat of the universe holding me up, doing for me what I could not do for myself, having faith in me.

And their faith was well founded. Architecture took me places I wouldn't have gone otherwise. I don't mean geographical places, I mean places in the mind, ways of thinking and of seeing things. For instance, it was through architecture I became interested in Buckminster Fuller, who by the time I came along was a very old man, but figuratively, he lifted me up. He launched me into outer space looking back at the earth when he coined the term Space Ship Earth. That is when I knew I would recycle whenever possible, and have done so ever since. His life touched and changed mine.

Likewise Philip Johnson. When I was a student of urban planning at Portland State as part of my architectural training, Philip Johnson, architectural icon, came to town to judge the Portland Building competition. There has not been such a competition like it before or since in Portland. Many admonish the judges for choosing Michael Graves' design, which later became known as “the birthday cake building”. It was a spatial planning and mechanical nightmare, that's true, but it symbolized something. It put Portland on the map architecturally speaking, and participating in that process, being in the same room with Philip Johnson, even as a spectator, made me feel important, part of something not just big, but internationally big. That helped mold my identity as a citizen of the world.

Most of the other teachers and architects who kept me buoyed were much less well known, some of them downright obscure. My first ever architectural teacher at PCC, a man by the name of Dick Kasal, to my great fortune came to the west coast from MIT and landed in the same classroom as me, he as the teacher, me as the bewildered, clueless student. For weeks, months, I sat in front of the blank white paper, terrified. Unable to even make a mark. But that didn't matter to Mr. Kasal. He pied pipered all of us willing to follow him. His vision was big. He was an amazing teacher, because he was brash and bold, said what he thought with his native New York accent, and he was interested in everything, including what his students thought. And he challenged us. What I learned from him was that I could do whatever I wanted to do, because he had done and was still doing just that. I did eventually make that first mark on the advice of another clueless student. Etched into the vellum with a 2H pencil, hard as a roofing nail.

Now I still make my mark with a pencil. Just in a different way. And I've learned to use softer lead. I'm glad of my years as an architect, and of late I've been having the feeling, I'm not done with that yet. It's so much a part of me, and I wouldn't have it any other way. In the mosh pit of my life, there have been so many people, I can't count them, and people are joining the slam dance still. For long after I became an architect, the knowledge I didn't do it alone has stayed with me. I like having had a mosh pit beneath me, it makes me want to do my part to lift others up as well. That's a good thing. How lucky is that for me? But I don't think I'm unique. No one is an island, especially where I live now, on an island. We all need one another. I think people who've been here a long time know that at a deep level. They are the ones who buoy me now with tips, suggestions, and encouragement. It's odd, because in reality, I never danced in, or was carried off by a mosh pit, the real thing's a bit too scary for me, but as a metaphor, to not a rock and roller, but an architect and a writer, the image of the mosh pit is an apt description of how people-rich my life has been, and still is now.

© M.E. Rollins