 Welcome. Thank you for visiting my website. As I mulled over the the theme of this blog post - what you can expect from this website - my mind did a sharp U turn. It sped back through decades of memories. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, it was 1990, and I was standing on Gladys Curry’s front porch and ringing her doorbell.
A survivor of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Gladys was then 93 years old. She was living alone in the house she had been living in for approximately 70 years. I was employed by an agency to visit her several times a week. Her house was filled with lace doilies, bone china teacups, and delicate glass things. My subconscious had surprised me. Gladys is not who I was expecting to think of, especially not when writing for a website. I am pretty sure she never touched a computer. Indeed, since she quit her office job and became a full time homemaker upon her marriage in, oh, say, 1920 or 1925, she had probably never even touched an electric typewriter. On one of our medical visits, a doctor asked her, “Who is the President of the United States?" Gladys’s voice rang out with confidence. “Warren G. Harding.” The doctor shrugged and seemed unsurprised. True to her upbringing, Gladys was the consummate hostess. Whenever she opened the door, her eyes sparkled. Gladys was delighted to receive a visitor; it was like a Christmas present to her. She always offered me a cup of tea. As soon as we had settled into her Queen Anne chairs with our teacups, Gladys would ask me a question. It was always the same question. “What do you know that’s new and different?” Or the occasional variation, “What have you done that’s new and different?” It was not just throat clearing. It was her way of approaching life. Gladys’s life had become restricted in many ways. She had outlived her family members and all of her friends. Due to the infirmities of aging, she could no longer take the bus to downtown San Francisco to shop. All of the ladies from her neighborhood who had gathered at the bus stop in neatly pressed dresses, hats, and white gloves for the weekly shopping excursion into The City - all were gone. But as she aged and her daily life became increasingly restricted, Gladys approached each day as an adventure. No longer able to peruse vases and silverware at Gump’s or have lunch under the leaded glass dome of the City of Paris department store, she became intimately acquainted with her backyard. She knew when the figs on her tree would ripen and take me outside to pluck and eat them. When I took her on excursions to the Oakland Rose Garden and the gardens at Lake Merritt, she would call my attention to the differences in the color and shading of the flowers and how the heads of some drooped down, bent from the weight of their large blossoms. As I mull over what I want this website to give you, I am remembering what Gladys gave me - a reminder to slow down, stop multitasking, be totally in the moment, and realize that if I am open to it - each day has something to offer me that is worth seeing, hearing, or reading. Gladys’s continuous search for the new and different is a good approach to both life and websites.
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When I was doing the final review of this website, I realized that this entire website overhaul had become an open love letter to Michael. I thought what better day to go live than Valentine's Day?
If I were to sum up the essence of Michael in one word, it would be an easy choice - openhearted. That word can mean so many things: kindness, a willingness to love and be loved. An ability to experience joy and awe. Resilience. Approaching life, work, relationships, and adversity with an open heart - that was Michael. Openheartedness did not mean that he was perpetually happy. He expressed lots of anger and frustration during our 32 years together. He allowed himself to really feel an emotion and express it, then allowed it to pass, and returned to to a place of optimism and savoring life. After experiencing some serious medical crises, he had to undergo dialysis. One late afternoon in early spring, I went to pick him up. I was a few minutes early. So I took a walk on the trail beside the clinic. The trailside was exploding with the first wildflowers of spring. All of them were purple, Michael's favorite color. When he emerged from the clinic, I told him about it and how it was every shade of purple you could imagine. When I asked, "Do you want to go on a purple walk with me?" his face lit up. During the last few months of his life, he wanted to get me gifts. But our financial constraints did not allow for dining out, flowers, and chocolates. So Michael put his creativity to work. He went online and searched for love poems. When I came home from work, he would recite for me a poem that he had memorized. This blog is intended to be an expression of openheartedness - a quality I had been losing before I met Michael. When we creatives do our best work, there is some quality of openheartedness in the process. In 2018 (after writing two novels, many freelance business pieces, and a few dozen newspaper articles), I had been going through a period of writer's block. By mid-March, I had pushed my way through that block. I was writing again. Descriptions, scenes, ideas, and character bits flowed from my pen. Words tumbled out of me so fast that my hand flew across notebook pages, chasing after them. This prompted me to imagine a new story, potentially a new novel. After a long creative drought, this was exhilarating. Within a few days, Michael and I found ourselves in the emergency room. A doctor's voice said, "It looks like cancer." Words fell away. My sense of wonder and the desire to explore new story ideas vanished. The word, cancer, came down like a meat cleaver, striking my notebook page. There was my life of writing and creating before that word was spoken. And then there was life after that word was spoken. As a writer, I entered a long, profound silence. This blog is part of my attempt as a writer to emerge from that silence. |
Janet RhodesAuthor and Editor at BratCat Productions Archives
April 2025
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