Tonight while awaiting the new year (oh dear, it’s already here!), I came across a visit I made with my middle daughter to the burial place of a distant family line.  It was a sunny day and ours was a genealogical mission. We found the family enclosure on church grounds and read several epitaphs:  “Father in thy gracious keeping leave we now thy servant sleeping”; “She had departed but has left with us a happy memory of her many virtues”; “Lord at thy side let my place and portion be. I would in thy peace abide for thou lovest me.”

As we were returning to our van, we were drawn to another enclosure whose entrance was  an arbor shaded by a tree from which ornaments and wind chimes dangled. The site included a garden bench. Several stuffed toys lay atop the small grave which bore the marker “Jon Benet Patricia Ramsey.”

Ohhh, I want to put some small attempt at art work on my blog, but I have essential tremor, which makes me shake like parkinsons but not have the other symptoms.  I can try and color a photo I already have, I guess:

No, I guess I can’t.  Bummer.  If I try to draw this is what happens:  (See opening).

Don’t eat chocolate.

Get organized.

Pick up after myself.

Routinely wade through all my saved phone messages.

Wash dishes right after their use.

Go through “Reader” every single day.

Take off makeup before I go to bed rather than the next morning.

SO, WHAT ARE YOURS NOT TO MAKE?

And what’s

it to

ya?

dog: Nancy Romans Not Quite Old

cat selfie felis cattus British Shorthair

After a lonely Christmas, a series of repetitive dreams reminded me what I miss most: the content missing from Longfellow’s lines on ships passing in the night.  My graduate school days in clinical psychology were the happiest and most alive of my life. Everyone was either real or trying to be so. “Thank you for the gift of your anger” was a common response to a heated exchange, as well as my more frequent “I know, and I’m working on it.”

How do other retired therapists cope with the everyday prattle?  I seem to have turned avoidant from fellow humans who avoid their depths.  The well-bred don’t cry at funerals; the “strong” avoid their own depths.

It’s been said that the layperson is leery of shrinks for fear they are psychoanalyzing them on sight. A smidgen of that is true. After years of training and observation of body language, it’s difficult not to pick up on a stranger’s stress, concerns or ambivalences.  And there’s no “I know, and I’m working on it” in sight.  Often there’s empathy for the struggles a stranger appears to be going through, but no way to comfortably acknowledge it.

I first noticed him at a free church lunch, due to some leaves caught in his dark knit cap.  After the luncheon I saw him seated in the damp grass, smoking. I’ve been wishing he had a pad to sit on, to protect him from the cold damp.  Maybe that’s just a problem of my loose boundaries.  (That’s something else I’m “working on.”)

I’ve learned one must be extra specially careful to phrase it just right when attempting to reach out. I tried ineptly with a fellow blogger and received a rather intense bite. Served me right for attempting to go where angels fear to stray (glad I can be free with my cliches here).

On top of it all is my slipping into senescence, and making errors in judgment.  I still cannot absorb nourishment from prattle, however.

OH, ABOUT THE DREAMS in my heading?  I’ve had a slew of them in the brief time since Christmas in which I’m attracting others to a group support session. The room in my house is overflowing with people–some I know and others strangers. In my past I not only participated as a member of a greatly therapeutic group, but also formed a women’s consciousness raising group in graduate school and another with staff wives at the mental health center where I worked.  In the therapy group we always began with each person describing how he/she was feeling at the beginning of group–remember, one usually feels different ways at the same moment.  And in reality I did lead many groups with regularly troubled individuals plus the groups with sex offenders.

Working for years at the nearby prison has isolated me from most of the psychologists in my small town,  and I do wonder how other longterm retired psychotherapists maintain.

Maybe it was just the magic of my graduate school milieu that developed my thirst for the depths.

This isn’t a reblog, but it’s not mine, either.  Go to Poetry Foundation for a real experience. Couldn’t resist trying to share it:  Jennifer  Michael Hecht.