And your answer . . .

What do we ever learn when things are going great?

Yes, we want our lives to be good, for things to run smoothly. Wouldn't it be nice? We'd like to be able to relax and kind of watch life glide along. 

But that is not how it has been or, I have to say, is supposed to be. It's when we're stretched or hurt or ill or when we're pressed to do the hard thing that we learn and grow. If we let ourselves. That is when we have the best chance at becoming good people, worth something, trustworthy, dependable, wise.

So I repeat the question. What do we ever learn when things are going great?

Who Knows?

Note: This is not a pleasant subject. You may want to stop here and not read this post.

I wondered today about heart attacks. Who has them and why some who look like they might or even should have one don't. It's because of my friend Emmie, probably 80 years old or so and quite plump or heavy, as my mother would have said--that's the only way I've seen Emmie in the 10 years I've known her: quite plump. So I love her anyway, you know.

She was telling me stories about people who have needed her CPR assistance--I think she used to be nurse--which one died, which ones lived.  She said she doubts she could give that kind of aid anymore; her back wouldn't take it. Apparently, you sometimes have to keep up that pushing on the heart for long periods of time.

So I looked at her and wondered why she has never had a heart attack and why I have. No. I don't wish she had. But I do wish I hadn't.

Emmie left the room and other women entered.

I wondered out loud if the moment some people are born they are destined (not the word I want) to have a heart attack later in life. And somehow that is known throughout the universe, and maybe, no matter what they do, it's just going to happen. 

Lucy scoffed. I might have scoffed, too, if I hadn't been the one who said it.

She, Lucy, said it's diet and life style. Okay, I know that. Except has my lifestyle and my diet been so reckless? I don't think so. I'm not fat, well, not very. I have never smoked or drunk alcohol. I would suggest my life style has been no more reckless than the way many people I know have lived. That's what I would suggest. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps.

My mother died of a heart attack. Will I? And was that programmed into my genes or my whatever from the moment of my birth? 

Not a question I'll be able to answer here. Wait and see what kills me, I guess. Happy thought.

You know, it's part of being a person to wonder about stuff like this. That's what I think.

What do you think?

Do you know that 5501 species of mammals have been discovered? That's 98% of the 5600 species estimated to be in existence. Estimates of the total number of animal species--that's all animals, including birds, fish, insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks, crustaceans--range from 3 million to 100 million. "One new study puts the number at 8.7 million, give or take a million." This from April 2013 National Geographic.

Insects, a fascinating category in itself, has an estimated 5,000,000 species, of which only 1 million, or 20%, have been discovered.

Okay. This information is nearly too much for me to entertain in my little brain, having just read Proof of Heaven. Must I try to reconcile the ideas? And am I supposed to comprehend such things? Or am I supposed to just live in my own little world and try to be a good mammal?

Who needs it?

I have just cleaned my broiler, which took longer and required much more work than cooking the one little steak on it for my dinner.

Yesterday I thought a piece of meat would be nice for my Sunday dinner. I rarely eat meat these days, beyond an occasional piece of fish, but once in a while, you know. So I bought a small tenderloin steak. It cost $16.99 a pound. My piece was $9.57. Yes, I am shocked by that and shocked that I went ahead and paid it.

But truly, I don't remember when I last ate a steak. At that price, beef, in the form of a steak, even once or twice a year is questionable. Good thing I don't want it very often. It was, however, a tasty and tender steak, and I did enjoy it. I had slices of red onion and slices of red bell pepper with it.

No, it's not that I am ashamed that an animal had to give its life so I could eat that meat.  BUT. Couple the pain of cleaning the broiler with the price of the meat and you have just one reason I don't eat much meat. You know the other reason. It's not good for me. I guess.

To give a fig, or not

I have been thinking about the article I read about de-extinction--bringing back, or attempting to, species that have gone extinct because of the doings of human beings on this planet. Not the dinosaurs. They went away much too long ago. But even the woolly mammoth is a possibility because scientists--and ivory hunters--keep finding remains preserved in ice. And DNA is available.

DNA is what makes possible this bringing back to life business.

We know about Dolly, but she wasn't extinct. But ten years ago they attempted to clone a certain ibex from the Pyrenees, but it died moments after its birth. It is now extinct. Even in ten years, though, they--those scientists who want to do these things--have improved methods and greater hopes.

Of course I am much interested in the passenger pigeon because I know it, know Martha, the last of that bird to live. She lived in captivity--in the Cincinnati Zoo--and died about 1914, her remains now preserved in a museum. I had my students do research on birds, Martha and her breed among them.

Birds present a more complicated challenge for de-extinction than do mammals, because the young grow within eggs, not a womb. Perhaps one day we'll read something exciting about the passenger pigeon, who once blackened the skies with its plenteous numbers. Hunted to extinction, and it didn't take long.

Can we? Should we? What would be the consequences if we did bring back some of the now extinct? I cannot answer. Something in me says, No, we should not. Something else in me says, Yes.

But I know little, really, of nature's delicate balance or of upsetting things, know nothing, really, of the possible consequences. Know nothing of the purposes these now extinct animals may have had or if they fulfilled those purposes. And I wonder if we, human beings, know enough to justify "meddling" with these things. Just because we can do something, does that mean we ought to? So, I say again. I can't answer the should question.

I know very well that many people don't give a fig about the passenger pigeon or the dodo bird or the woolly mammoth or that strange animal that looked like a wolf, was called the Tasmanian Tiger, and was actually a marsupial. Of course, I had never heard of it, the Thylacine, because it was extinct by the 1930s.

But I do. I give a fig.

Do You Know About This?

My older sister said something today that I said 10 years ago.  "I'm in a category I never wanted to be in."
She means widow.

Her husband died late January, so she has had two months of being what she never wanted to be--or thought she would be.

It's a funny thing how things change when you become that, a widow. People regard you differently. They can't help it any more than you can. You are different.  Even if you think you're the same person. You aren't. You don't have that other part of you, your husband, to hang onto or stand next to or just know he's around. Other people know it, too.

You go most places alone. You eat alone--at home or wherever. You deal with rude people alone. And there are some.

Yes, there are friends--married--who still try to include you, but it's weird. A third party or a fifth person, and either you are not part of the conversation or they try to include you in it and you become quite central to the conversation. And now this is going to sound like I'm a snob. So be it. Most of these people are old, and my age aside, I don't have as much in common with them as you might think. Go ahead. Laugh. I don't care if you don't believe me.

I'm exaggerating a little. But only a little.

And here's another thing.

I told my sister that after my husband died I began noticing that old guys look me up and down, like in the grocery store or the mall or Costco. She said she has noticed that, too.

They really do, you know. I don't know why. I mean what do you suppose they are thinking? I know what I'm thinking. "Back off, buster. You're barking up the wrong widow."

Young guys don't look me. To them I'm invisible. In fact, I am invisible to young people of both genders. And don't try to contradict me here. I absolutely know the truth of what I say about these phenomena. Old guys gawk; young guys don't. And don't get me wrong. I don't want young guys looking me over. But I hate it that old guys do.

I told Alyce about this those ten years ago, told her, "Alyce, here is what my life has come to. Old guys look at me. Yuck. I'm just geezer bait." So she made me a T-shirt with those two words--Geezer Bait--on front. I've only worn it two, maybe three times in all those years. It's risky to wear such a shirt, you know.

By the way, here's where my sister has an advantage over my situation for the last ten years. She has me, her widowed sister, and I will talk to her and listen to her and go places with her. True, we live in different states, but they're not that far apart. I don't think this makes me a wonderful sister. It's just that I know something of what she is experiencing. That can be helpful.

Widow. It is not a good word. Person is good. I'm still a person, and so is my sister.

About Being a Person

How often do we hope for what we know is hopeless? I'm not looking for a number here, as in exactly how often, just an acknowledgment that we do it. My sense of what it means to be human tells me we all do it. I know I do. Like me hoping my finches will come back to the wreath on the front porch, which hope causes me to delay the moment when I give up and take down the wreath to drop it in the garbage can.

I know the finches are nesting, and do so every year now, somewhere on the east side of the house. That should be enough, I suppose, but it isn't, because I can only hear them. I much prefer them where I can watch the whole life thing, as I did for those 10 years. From nest building to eggs to hatching to flying away. I loved it, even though they made a mess on the wall of the house.

Or like hoping my husband will come back, even for a short visit, when I know that is not possible. Or, in other words, hopeless.

Truly, I don't use up a lot of energy hoping for that one either. But there is something in my gut, or maybe my soul, that does not allow me to give up. Something that tells me it is possible. I suppose it only means that I want to see him--here, where I am, not there, where he is--and whatever forces exist in this universe already know that.

I have never entertained the foolish, if very human, notion that "if he really loved me, he would" come back. I don't even know why I just wrote that, because I have never thought it. Sometimes our own writing can surprise us. Did you know that?

P.S. I have taken the wreath down. It now awaits Thursday's trash pick up.