Day: August 22, 2017

I spoke with Connie this afternoon at the Wesley Health and Rehabilitation Center and she said the staff there had just held a meeting and she was coming home to the Mansion Assisted Care Facility next Tuesday, August 29th.

This is wonderful news, two weeks ago she could not walk and was struggling to breathe and eat, but she says the physical therapy staff at Wesley has been wonderful and she is walking every day and feel more and more comfortable.

She is well enough to come back to the Mansion, where the staff there is eager to help her with her continuing rehabilitation. To live at the Mansion, the residents have to be mobile, either on foot or in a wheelchair and she is definitely ready to come home, say the doctors there.

The Mansion has kept her room ready and Red goes in to check on it every time we go to the Mansion. Red and i will try and get to Wesley one more time before she gets home. Connie said she misses the residents and staff, and she misses Red and Maria. She said she is eager to work together with Maria on a fiber project, the two of them haven’t quite figured out which one.

Red has worked with Connie to get her up and walking and we will continue that work, if the doctors and staff approve. This is a great triumph for Connie, whose will is strong and mind is sharp and clear. She really loves being at the Mansion and worked hard every day to get back.

Very glad to report this good news. And thanks for the cartons of books she received while in rehab, they helped her get through each day. She says she loves you all. It is appropriate to  send flowers to greet Connie on her return, but her room is small, so the flowers ought to be small, the overflow will be shared with the other residents, or displayed around the Mansion, but she will see all of them and your cards.

It is also fine to send her cards letters, photos and  messages (she has enough books and yarn), she will be home on the 29th.

You can send messages or cards to Connie, C/O The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y. She reads every one and I can testify that your stories and love and photos and good words have boosted her through some very dark and difficult days.

Connie is grateful to your support, and so am I. I think we all became family for Connie, something she really lives for every day and cares about. The Army Of Good is wracking up victory after victory, and appears quite unstoppable.

Gus is a farm dog, it’s no longer really in question. We bring him into the pasture every day and let him fend for  himself. If she sheep run towards him, he gets out of the way. He is totally at ease with the donkeys and has become a great pal of Fanny’s, he and Lulu are easy with one another.

Gus has also struck up a deepening friendship – and an unlikely one – with Zelda, our most rebellious and independent Chariot ewe. Today in the Pole Barn, Zelda came  up to check Gus out and Gus did not retreat, he held his ground. Then he leaned forward and kissed Zelda on the nose, and she seemed to respond, I see that they trust one another.

One animal at a time, the diplomatic and patience – and very affectionate – Gus is making himself an accepted presence on the farm. He seems to know where to start and how to wind friends. Some people thought we were crazy letting this small dog run around with such large animals, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit there was some risk to it, especially at first.

But you can’t teach a dog to solve problems if you don’t let them have any problems – a lesson Boomer parents are often slow to learn – and you can’t solve all of their problems for them. So we chose to let Gus be a dog, and permit him to integrate himself into our lives, not keep him away from our lives.

A great dog enters the lives of human and is a partner, not a piteous and dependent thing. Gus has the makings of a great dog, in a very small package.

There is this ageist and noxious idea in our culture that as people age, they are no longer able to change.

I notice the pundits say it all the time, our President, at 71, can and will never change. This puzzles and pains me because aging is all about change, and there is no aging person on the earth who cannot speak of change and adaptation, it is at the very core of getting older and moving towards the edge of life.

I am learning as I get older to embrace myself, and to acknowledge and accept the person I am, even if that is not the person I wanted to be, or even claimed to be in my own mind, or that people think I ought to be. In the past decade, almost everything about my life has changed. The other day, I wrote about the uncomfortable truth that I was not like the other children, and am not like the other grown-ups either.

I like to say that I was no good at being young, I am much better at being older. and I do not look back on my youth with nostalgia, it was a painful and unrewarding time for me. At that age, I could never change, and I was always ashamed of myself. I am not ashamed of myself now.

This morning, I woke up and was trying to explain to Maria why the obviously wonderful and awesome eclipse – the whole country was in awe –  just did not move me much.

But then, I said, I am not like the other children. No, she said, you certainly are not and I love you the way you are. This is still a shocking idea for me. But for the first time, I didn’t say it apologetically or with shame, I said it with pride and what I call radical acceptance. It just is.

it is okay to be different from other people, I not only have come to accept it, but I have also come to embrace it. I have come to embrace myself. In a sense, social media has been a great gift to me in that way. Total strangers are always telling me what I should say, think and do, and every time that happens, I look inward and get a bit stronger and clearer.

Someone lectured me on Facebook the other day because she didn’t like a reply I made to someone  telling me what to think. This did not offend me or irritate me in the least, I wrote back that she misunderstood my writing and my way of thinking.

I just was not interested in what she thought about how I reply to people on Facebook comments, she was welcome to comment on my post or move on somewhere else. It feels cleansing to to that, and healing.

She shut up and stayed. The self is strong, given the chance.

This liberation has been slow and arduous and gradual for me, the intrusion of so many other voices into my work and head – something new in our time — has challenged me to embrace and accept myself. So has growing older. If I don’t like myself, who will like me, and if I don’t love myself, who will love me?

And how can I love anyone else?

I think the work of the Army of Good this year has also helped me to embrace myself. I had this idea that I wasn’t good enough to do good, but Mother Teresa was right, I might not be great, but I can commit acts of great love, you don’t have to be great, or even good.

In my granddaughter Robin, I see signs of radical acceptance, I see in video after video and photo after photo an embrace of self, she seems very happy with who she is and with the live she lives. Her smile and love of life is evident. I hope she keeps it.

I credit my daughter Emma with this remarkable parenting achievement. She did not embrace herself at Robin’s age, and neither did I. There are very few photo of either of us smiling all the time.

Yet she seemed to know how to give this gift to her daughter.

We all can change, at any time, and we can all embrace ourselves, I think. It is never wise to label yourself or to ever let anyone else tell you what to think, for any reason. It is lethal, it just kills the mind and the spirit.

“Tales From The Mansion,” the new book of stories from the residents of the Mansion, a Medicaid Assisted Care Facility in Cambridge, New York, has  been proofed and printed and is on its way to Bedlam Farm. It cost $10 plus shipping and can be purchased in only one place – Battenkill Books, the wonderful independent bookstore in my town.

The book store has already received pre-orders for more than 100 copies of “Tales Of The Mansion,” not bad for a book with a first print run of 200 copies. Move over, Harry Potter.

It’s easy to get this book, Battenkill Books takes Paypal and major credit cards. You can order the book online or by calling the store at 518 677 2515. I will sign the book if requested. All proceeds will go to help support the Mansion outings for the residents.

The Mansion is a special place, full of life, memory, yearning, struggle and love. The residents are lucky to have a staff so dedicated to them, it is an unusual place. When I began the short story workshop at the Mansion, I asked the residents to think of  story that was important to them and their lives, and they responded.

The book has 15 stories and is 38 pages long. It includes ten of my photographs from the Mansion. The book is dedicated to the proposition that the stories of the elderly on the edge of life are important, and should be told and remembered. You can participate in this project and promote this idea by pre-ordering your own copy of “Tales Of The Mansion.”

This is something every assisted care facility in the country could do easily and well.

Printed copies should be available in the next few days, and the book is selling quickly. You can order it here. The Mansion residents and their families will get free copies, the rest will be sold. I can order more quickly and easily. Thanks again to the Army of Good, whose deeds are becoming legend.

A reminder that we will be sponsoring a “Pizza Party” to kick off “Assisted Care Week” at the Mansion on September 11, 11:30 a.m. Decorations, gift bags, favors or photos and cards will be very welcome, they can be sent to The Mansion, “PIzza Party,” 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

You have given the residents of the Mansion many gifts, but the greatest are your messages and photographs and love. More than anything else, the residents need to feel known and cared for, and you (we) are doing that. Thanks.