tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22268767627143580612024-03-05T21:34:09.105-05:00My Green vermontEulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.comBlogger1108125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-44152671616414737882021-09-16T13:52:00.000-04:002021-09-16T13:52:27.715-04:00To My Readers:<p>Here is my blog's new home:</p><p>https://mygreenvermont.com/</p><p>I look forward to seeing you there, and thanks for reading!</p><p>Lali</p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-40631620166503579742021-09-08T12:02:00.000-04:002021-09-08T12:02:08.833-04:00Eating Bugs<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Quito, 1954. My mother comes excitedly
home from the market with a package of shrimp, the first she’s found since we
arrived from Barcelona, where shrimp was only one of several marine species in
our Sunday <i>paella</i>. She places the package in the sink and asks the indigenous
maid, Maria—black braids, embroidered blouse, felt skirt—to wash them in
preparation for cooking. Maria opens the package, takes one look at the
contents, and runs out of the kitchen, her braids streaming behind her,
screaming that those bugs in the sink are just like the bugs with many legs that
you find curled up under a stone, and she would rather die than touch one, much
less eat it.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">It’s my first lesson in gastronomic
relativity, in which I realize that what we like to eat or can’t bear to even think
of eating is determined more by where we come from than by the merits of the
thing on our plate. Ecuador is replete with challenges to gastronomic
provincialism. There is the Andean village where at dusk small flying beetles
take to the air, and are chased by swarms of little boys who catch and eat
them. “They are sweet,” they tell us, munching. And there is the Saturday
afternoon ritual when native families sit in front of their houses ridding each
other’s scalp of lice, which they eat--a practice that supposedly helps to
protect them against typhoid. And in the Amazon basin, we are told, people hunt
monkeys with blow guns and boil them whole….</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In Spain, before we went to
South America, everything that I ate was anatomically correct: small fish were
served entire on my plate, and I don’t remember being grossed out by their fishy
eyes looking up at me, or by the knee caps and hip joints of rabbits and
chickens, or by the chicken’s comb, which my
grandmother used to save for me.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But the years have changed
me. Long before I became vegetarian I stopped eating chicken thighs, because I
couldn’t bear the sight of all the muscles and tendons; then I stopped eating
chicken breasts (those ribs!); and then I stopped eating chicken altogether.
Now, wishing I had the energy and resourcefulness to be vegan, I make-do with vegetables
and dairy products, with an occasional can of salmon or sardines to boost my
protein intake.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I recently read “Grub,” an
article in the September 6 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i> about entomophagy, or
the practice of eating insects. Given the expanding human population and the
diminishing resources of the planet, insects offer an ecologically sustainable source
of high-quality protein, so it becomes almost a moral duty for us all to support
the companies that are working to make entomophagous cuisine available to the
world at large—and that includes actually eating their products.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">This is something that I will
happily do <i>as long as</i> I cannot tell what I am eating. That means no legs,
no antennae, no compound eyes, no diaphanous wings, no chewy bits of
exoskeleton. Give me bugs ground into anonymous, homogeneous powder, and I will
ingest not only cute, small things like ants and ladybugs but Luna moths, tarantulas,
locusts, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Shared by most Americans, this
preference for bugs in powder form presents a problem for the “tiny livestock”
industry, because insect protein, as you know if you’ve ever squashed a bug, is
gooey instead of solid. But they’re working on it.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Note that I haven’t said
anything about flavor. But mix some insect powder with an egg substitute,
dredge in bread crumbs, fry lightly in olive oil, and what’s not to like? I
just celebrated Labor Day with a sad little vegetarian patty made of mostly
beans and corn. After that, critter croquettes don’t sound half bad to me.</span> </p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-74702543832679142892021-09-02T12:03:00.000-04:002021-09-02T12:03:28.140-04:00Wobbly<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I’m in a wobbly state these
days. This, I
am told, is normal after hip replacement surgery, but lately I’ve been feeling even
more wobbly emotionally than I do physically.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">My inner weather shifts
from placid to stormy countless times during the day. It doesn’t take much to lower
my barometric pressure: an unanswered email, one item too many on my to-do list
and, above all, the <i>danse macabre</i> of the news cycle, swirling in my
consciousness from dawn to dusk.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I wasn’t always like this.
Although I had my ups and downs, I never approached my present weathervane-like
state. One variable of course is age. I had always imagined that someday, when
I finally grew up, I would attain a sage-like equanimity. So far this fantasy
has not come true for me, on the contrary.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But the principal variable, I
believe, is not <i>my</i> age, but the age in which we live. Floods and fires. Afghans
clinging to the fuselage of taxiing cargo planes. Haitians being dug out (or
not being dug out) of ruins. Americans dying who would have lived if they had
been vaccinated. Overflowing ICUs, exhausted doctors and nurses, and a virus
that keeps reinventing itself. The uncertainty of what life will look like in a
month, or three.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> Who can stay calm in the middle of this?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Often I tell myself that no
generation before us has dealt with threats of this magnitude. And then I try
to imagine myself as a Jew in 1940s Germany, or as my father, in hiding from
1936 to 1939, the duration of the Spanish Civil War. Surely the daily fear for
their lives, their hunger and deprivation, were worse than what I and the
people around me have to put up with.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But here is the difference:
although for us lucky ones the dangers are not immediate, they are planetary. We
are the first generation to live day in and day out with the awareness of
massive extinctions and colossal disasters across the globe, and the threat of
more to come. (Have you noticed how few butterflies are around this summer? I
saw a single Monarch at my hyssop yesterday and almost went down on my knees
before it.)</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">So in my apocalyptic moments,
my mood teeters and falls. But then, because I am human and cannot sustain any one
emotional state for very long, the phone rings, or I meet a friend, or I find a
good book, and I lurch upright again. However, these are merely distractions, and
the next newscast, article, or photo plunges me into the depths once more.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Is this the new normal? And
if so, how are we going to get through it? Is there even something beyond the </span><i style="font-size: 14pt;">through</i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">?
I suspect that, for weary Londoners in the middle of the Blitz, it also must
have seemed as if their trials would last forever. But then the Americans finally
joined the war and made everything better. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Where, I wonder, are the “Americans”
who will come with weapons, K-rations, and chocolates, and get us out of </span><i style="font-size: 14pt;">this</i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">
mess?</span> </p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-84862325478616678072021-08-30T11:37:00.000-04:002021-08-30T11:37:10.996-04:00To My Readers:<p><span style="font-size: medium;">This is to let you know that, after today, if you have subscribed to this blog you may not get an email with my new posts.</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">I am also aware that it is now impossible to leave comments on the blog. I apologize for these technical problems, which I am trying to resolve.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I post every week on Wednesday or Thursday, so until things return to normal you can always find me by clicking on<a href="MyGreenVermont" target="_blank"> MyGreenVermont</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I am sorry for the inconvenience, and am grateful to you, my readers, who keep me writing.</span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-74153070839472238132021-08-25T14:01:00.001-04:002021-08-25T14:07:00.254-04:00Showing Off<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> My new left hip is only four hours old when the nurse comes into my room. "Wanna take your hip for a spin?" she asks, wheeling the walker up to the bed. I stand up and, feeling like the recipient of a New Testament miracle, take hold of my walker and walk. "You're doing great! Feel free to walk up and down the halls if you're up to it," she says, and returns to her station. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Fiddling with the ties at my back, I adjust the XXL hospital gown to my actual dimensions, and go exploring. At the end of the hall, I stare out the huge window at the rain. Next door there is an empty room with chairs and sofas intended for visitors. As I leave, my walker bumps against the doorjamb. What am I doing with this annoying contraption? I'm not even putting any weight on it. In fact, I can probably get around without it. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I leave the walker in my room and take another stroll. This is much better! It leaves my hands free to keep the XXL gown from flapping open while I fantasize that my recovery is over and I am back to normal, even before the sun sets on my surgery day. Not the least of my joys is the look of amazement on the nurse's face when she comes to fetch me. "Wow, you're really killing it!" she says, adjusting the blood pressure cuff. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I blush with pleasure, and imagine her back at her station saying to her fellow nurses, "That woman in 2116 is amazing. I've never seen anything like her in my life! Nobody has <i>ever </i>recovered from surgery this fast."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Now it is the dead of night, and two orthopedics residents appear at the foot of my bed. "Do you think you could try raising you leg a little?" one of them asks. I respond with a high kick worthy of the Rockettes. "How cool is <i>that</i>!" he whispers to his friend. They leave and I sink back into slumber, wreathed in smiles. I'd forgotten how good it feels to impress people.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The night nurse comes by with some pills. "I hear you've been walking around without your walker," she says, handing me a glass of water. "That's just not safe. I must ask that you use your walker at all times while you're in the hospital." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Alongside the show-off, there lives within me a deeply obedient and compliant child. It is now <i>her </i>turn to shine, so I use the walker for the remainder of my stay, even though that makes my excursions less exciting (fewer chances of impressing staff) and clouded by the fear of my gown falling open in the back.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">But when the physical therapist comes in the morning to clear me to go home, I am back in show-off mode, demonstrating the flexions and abductions I've been practicing for months in preparation for surgery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I am not without self-awareness, so throughout my time in the hospital I am conscious of this childlike compulsion to impress everyone I come across, from surgeons to orderlies. But <i>why </i>I might be doing this, I have no idea. Could it be that I believe that my performances will get me more attention, and better care? But that seems counterintuitive, as doctors and nurses would surely be more inclined to minister to me if I appeared feeble and needy. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Or it might be that at my stage in life there is little opportunity for performance and the ensuing applause. Gone are the days when studying hard would get me an A, so now I aim for good grades from medical personnel. It may make me look ridiculous, but I can't help myself.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Or maybe it's simply in my genes. As my 94-year-old mother was dying of encephalitis, I sat by her bed reading her a Catalan poem about the afterlife that she and my father had always loved. But before I could finish she shook her head, waved the book aside, and said "Look! Look what <i>I </i>can do!" and underneath the bedsheet she raised her left leg, and then her right, a good two feet above the mattress.</span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-75067082519310788522021-08-09T11:00:00.001-04:002021-08-09T11:00:55.731-04:00Little White Paw<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I go into the bedroom to
prepare for a zoom session. My dog Bisou is with me because she’s always with
me, unless I’ve accidentally locked her in a closet into which she has followed
me. I close the bedroom door, open the laptop, and wait for the host to start
the session. Out in the hallway, the cat Telemann gives a melancholy meow, and sticks
his little white paw under the door. If there is one thing I cannot resist, it
is Telemann’s little white paw. I would interrupt a zoom meeting with the Pope
himself if Telemann stuck his paw under the door.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The session hasn’t started
yet, so I get up and open the door. You’d think that he would rush right in, but
no. Instead, he backs up against the little bench across the hall and performs his
marking ritual. This consists of raising one hind foot after the other while
making trembling motions with his upright tail. You have probably seen male tigers
do this against a jungle tree in nature documentaries. Unlike the tigers,
Telemann is neutered, so he does not spray urine, for which I’m grateful. When
I described this ritual to the vet, he said it was a sign of affection. “You
are loved,” he whispered.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I beckon with voice and
gesture for Telemann to come into the room, but he’s not done with the marking
ceremony. I know that if I simply close the door, the meowing and pawing will
start all over again, so “Heeeere kitty” I implore, in my most dulcet tones. He
looks at me as if he’s never seen me before.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Surely by now the zoom session
has started? I go to check the computer, and while I’m turned away Telemann ambles
nobly into the room. I leap to the door and close it before he can change his
mind. Both pets are now in the room—Bisou is already snoring—and I can center
myself as I wait for the session to begin.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But where is the cat? He’s
sitting by the closed door, staring at it as if to bore a hole through which to
escape. Is he thirsty? Is he bored? Does he need to use the litter box? How
urgent is his need? If I let him out, he’ll insist on coming back in. On the
other hand, if I ignore him there may be a heavy price to pay.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The host has appears and the
session begins. The minute Telemann hears voices, he jumps onto my lap and presses
his damn little white paw on the keyboard, which causes the zoom screen to
vanish. When I get it back, he maneuvers himself with his derrière to the
screen, tail raised to the sky. It’s a good thing I’m not zooming with the Pope.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Despite his many quirks, I
find Telemann entrancing, because he is so mysterious. Dogs have their own mysteries,
of course, but compared to a cat, a dog is an open book. Living with a dog is
like watching a foreign movie with subtitles—you miss some stuff, but you get
the general idea. Living with a cat is like watching that same movie minus
subtitles, and having to figure out what is going on by guesswork and paying
close attention to the actors’ facial expressions.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Few things are as puzzling as
trying to read a cat’s face. Perhaps this is because the cat’s facial
expression often bears no relation in human terms to what he is doing. When
Telemann in a playful mode “assaults” Bisou or leaps after a string I’m
wiggling for him, his face remains as solemn and composed as when he does his
nails at the scratching post. Dogs have play faces. Cats do not.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">There is one situation in
which a cat’s face does what a human’s would do in the same circumstance, and
that is the purr face--the cozy-comfy face, with the eyelids at half-mast. It’s
the kind of face that, when a human makes it, we think of as cat-like. But for
the most part, a cat expresses himself with his body—tail up or lashing, back
flat or arched, and so on. We humans are a face-oriented species, however, and
we scrutinize eyes, cheeks, and lips before we remember to look at the body, so
cats appear sphinx-like to us, hieratic and unfathomable.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I like to live with both a
dog and a cat for the same reason that some married men keep mistresses: the
dog (the wife) offers reliable comfort and companionship, while the cat, like a
capricious mistress, is in charge of mystery and drama.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisGuKVcG-QPBenrjFD9lrHDLg9hf8pSi1V8ZxsbzvtWgyKZmxy5sT6kxdusH9NEYS3a3n-hF7IIFanQZqSFWVJSwBYVHhinYWmL6POV2KHfpULhtimgWQdpgXS39lhOBR1J6lvMBy6uiVn/s2048/cat+face.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1833" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisGuKVcG-QPBenrjFD9lrHDLg9hf8pSi1V8ZxsbzvtWgyKZmxy5sT6kxdusH9NEYS3a3n-hF7IIFanQZqSFWVJSwBYVHhinYWmL6POV2KHfpULhtimgWQdpgXS39lhOBR1J6lvMBy6uiVn/s320/cat+face.jpg" width="286" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-84769306965915453302021-08-04T09:44:00.000-04:002021-08-04T09:44:36.051-04:00The Age of Uncertainty<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Masks, social distancing, distance
learning, quarantines--we thought we were done with all that. We flung down our
face coverings, hugged our friends, breathed sighs of relief. Now mask mandates,
booster shots, and those obnoxious limitations loom once more on the horizon. Will
the uncertainty ever end?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The answer is, no. Covid may
fade; the dreaded Delta variant may disappear; and we may return to some
version of normalcy, if we can remember what that was like. But one thing is
certain: <i>something else</i> is going to happen. In 1918, after the “war to
end all wars,” people thought that they could get back to business as usual.
But the war was followed by the influenza pandemic, then by the Great
Depression, and by the Spanish Civil War, which was the dress rehearsal for the
Second World War….</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">No matter how often we are
proven wrong, we humans persist in our longing for certainty and stability, for
things to stop happening so we can rest. I can’t imagine that this desire has
any evolutionary value. Wouldn’t it have been better if as a species we had evolved
to take change in our stride--to expect it, accept it, even enjoy it? Instead,
we are forever waiting for the crisis of the moment to end, for the project to
be completed, for exams to be over--and then, what? Then, and not before then,
we will relax, take a deep breath, and be happy.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Here is how it is for me
right now: for a year, I have been waiting for a hip replacement, which is scheduled
for next week. As I hobble around preparing for surgery--making one last trip
to the market, taking Bisou for her check-up, doing the laundry--my mind, my
heart, and my very bones are suffused with the conviction that after that magic
date all will be normal, all will be well, and I will finally rest and be at
peace.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I feel this despite the fact
that the many years I have lived and the many Buddhist books I have read should
have taught me that, even if the surgery goes well (which it will!), when I return
from the hospital some problem/dilemma/unexpected shift in the axis of my world
will greet me at the door. It’s reasonable for me to anticipate hurting less after
the surgery, but foolish to expect to take a deep breath and sink into blessed permanence.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">That deep breath signaling the
end of change would, if I were to take it, be my last one. Up until that
moment, as long as I am alive, everything is bound to continue shifting in
maddeningly uncertain ways. So if I want to relax and be happy, I need to
figure out a way to do it right now, with chaos swirling all around.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I often find Pema Chodron,
the Buddhist nun and teacher, hard to take. But that’s not her fault. She’s a
tough woman, and she writes unvarnished truths that, in my heart of hearts, I
know are accurate. Such as: “We think that the point is to pass the test or
overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.
They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall
apart again. It’s just like that.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Who wants to hear this kind
of thing? And yet, we all know that she’s right.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">She also says, “Impermanence
is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony
with reality.” This reminds me of the Aesop fable that I read as a child, in
which a sturdy oak tree, standing mighty against the wind, mocks the lowly reeds
that bend and sway with each gust. But then a big storm comes and knocks down
the oak, while the bending, swaying reeds survive unscathed.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The weather of our lives is as
changeable as the weather of the planet. It’s human nature to identify with the
oak tree, wanting certainty and permanence no matter what. I am working on
becoming more reed-like, swaying and bending in harmony with whatever comes,
and maybe even learning to take pleasure in the dance.</span> </p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-24618679434472948452021-07-28T18:14:00.000-04:002021-07-28T18:14:38.799-04:00Elegy for a Bird Feeder<p> <span style="font-size: 14pt;">The finches (purple, house,
and gold), along with their dun-colored wives and children, are gone. So are
the titmice, nuthatches, chickadees, mourning doves, and woodpeckers (downy, hairy,
and red-bellied). Also the rose-breasted grosbeak couple, the cardinal family, several
tribes of unidentifiable (by me) sparrows, and all the chipmunks. Even the
squirrels have fled.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A bear was seen recently in
our retirement community, and I had to take down the sunflower seed feeder, the
suet cage (which needed to be refilled <i>every day</i>), and the squirrel baffle.
If I had been living on my own, I would have taken my chances with the bear,
but living where we do, I felt that I needed to be prudent.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Taking down the feeders was
one of the low points in a not-so-easy summer. The bear’s appearance coincided with
the fledging of dozens of finches in the trees nearby. Four or five baby birds
at a time would perch on the feeder, scrambling and fluttering on top of each
other for their beleaguered parent to stuff seeds down their gullets. For hours
after I took down the feeders the birds kept coming, and I could hear the insistent
zik-zik of the young begging for food. I spent the afternoon in the bedroom, to
get away from the sight and sound of so much disappointment.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Then, suddenly, they gave up.
Our yard is now bird-, squirrel-, and chipmunk-free. The cat Telemann, who used
to spend his days leaping from windowsill to windowsill, lashing his tail and
flinging himself at the glass in the eternal hope of catching one of the critters, now sleeps his life away. Sometimes—not often--a
bird comes to the birdbath, drinks for a couple of seconds, and takes off.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">And sometimes a bee from the hives
across the street perches on the rim and sips a drop or two. This is cause for
much excitement—look, a bee!—kind of how you would feel if a unicorn emerged
from the woods and approached your house. I had never thought or cared about the
drinking habits of bees, but I do now.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Still, talk about downsizing!
After I gave up my goats and chickens, I assuaged my urge to nurture by feeding
birds and squirrels. Now I’m reduced to offering water to bees. But bees, I remind
myself, are better than nothing.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The universe is doing its
best to teach me lessons in non-attachment, but I am not a good student. I can’t
wait for the first frost, when the trees turn colors and the bear goes to sleep
in his cave, and I can put out the feeders again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-52920757110947648912021-07-14T11:44:00.000-04:002021-07-14T11:44:39.684-04:00Pep Rally<p> <span style="font-size: 14pt;">Birmingham, Alabama. A Friday
afternoon in September. It is the end of my first week in my new American
school, and I am at my locker, about to go home. The hallways are deserted, but
it’s probably because everybody has already left for the weekend. A girl comes
by. “You can’t go home now!” she says. “There’s a pep rally in the gym! Hurry up, you’ll be late!”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It’s been a week full of
weirdness. The weirdness of something called “homeroom.” The weirdness of the
Pledge of Allegiance (from which I, a citizen of Spain, am excused). The
weirdness of diagramming sentences. And the unspeakable weirdness of boys in
the class.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">And now this pep rally. What
is “pep”? What is “rally”?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I find my way to the gym,
push open the door, and am blown back by a wall of sound so loud it nearly knocks
me over. Never in my thirteen years, and certainly not in my previous schools
(run by nuns, for future ladies) have I heard such a din. The entire school is here,
even the priests, nuns, and lay teachers, all of them yelling at the top of
their lungs. There are repeated “rah’s” and “go’s” and “yay’s,” but are these
expressions of anger, alarm, or what? Why are they raising their fists in the
air? Is this a political demonstration?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The noise is so loud that I
give up trying to understand and stand there dumbly, sure that everybody is
wondering what is wrong with me. In the center of the commotion stands a line
of girls dressed in flared knee-length green skirts and thick white sweaters
with big green letters on them. Grinning maniacally and yelling “rah,”
and “go” and “yay,” they shake what look like mop heads made of green and white
strips of paper. Periodically they give an extra loud yell and jump in unison, pumping their arms, arching their backs, and making their skirts float up.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Behind the girls is an even
more bizarre sight: a group of what I assume are boys with helmets covering
their heads and part of their faces, grotesquely swollen shoulders, and capri
pants. They are dressed in white, with big green numbers on their shirts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p> T</o:p></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">hen Father H., the
principal, steps to the microphone and the yelling subsides. He makes the sign
of the cross and the girls drop their mops to the floor as their skirts settle
around their calves. “Hail Mary, full of grace…” Father H. intones. I recognize
the prayer, so I say to myself “<i>Dios te salve, María</i>…” But what are we praying
for?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">When it’s over I walk home in
the amazing Alabama heat, glad to be away from the noise and the alien excitement,
but feeling strange and alone. I’m worried that I never figured out what the
pep rally was about, and that I will perhaps be asked about it on a test. For the
moment, though, my brain unclenches, and I bask in the temporary relief of not hearing,
not speaking, not trying to understand English.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">At home, I kiss my mother, go
into my room, and turn on the radio—very softly because my father is in the
living room practicing. Buddy Holly is singing that it’s raining in his heart.
I can understand that. It means that he is sad because the girl he loves has
gone away. (Will an American boy ever be sad because of me?)</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Then comes the mournful refrain:
“Oh misery, misery, what’s gonna become of me?” And my brain, ceaselessly working
to make sense of the strange world in which I find myself, concludes that Buddy
must be saying “Oh, Missouri, Missouri”-- which is a state somewhere in the
middle of this big, confusing country where that cruel girl has gone and left
him all alone, like me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-66605450679833566802021-07-07T11:51:00.000-04:002021-07-07T11:51:07.907-04:00My Parents' Wild and Sexy New Year's Eve<p> M<span style="font-size: 14pt;">y violinist father always
worked on holidays. Even on Christmas Day, while the rest of us were still
eating the capons that my maternal grandmother had sent to Barcelona from her
farm, my father would pull out his pocket watch, drain his glass of champagne,
and say, “time for me to go.” He would go around the table and kiss his mother,
his father, his two sisters, my mother, and me and, after admonishing my mother
not to wait up for him, pick up his violin and vanish into the night.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The year I was eight, a
concert was cancelled and he was free on New Year’s Eve. Since he worked outside
the house most nights of the week, my mother thought it would be exciting,
instead of going out, to celebrate by staying home. She explained to me that because
this celebration, which she called by its French name, <i>réveillon</i>, would happen
at midnight, I would not be included, but I could participate in the
preparations.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In the early December dusk we
set out to buy the food. First, we went to the fruit seller to buy grapes,
because in Spain on New Year’s Eve you need to eat one grape with each stroke of
midnight, for luck. Then we went to the <i>xarcuteria</i>, to buy <i>foie gras</i>,
<i>xorisso</i>, ham sliced so thin you could almost see through it, and five different
kinds of olives. Next we stopped at the wine store for a bottle of Catalan bubbly.
On the way to the bakery we passed the church. A gypsy woman
with a baby, her hand outstretched, huddled on the steps. My mother gave her some coins, and as we
walked away with our net bag bursting with good things to eat she said to always
remember how lucky we were to have food, and a house to live in.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The </span><i style="font-size: 18.6667px;">réveillon </i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">would
take place not at the regular dining room table, but at the smaller, more
intimate brazier table. This was a round table with a wooden framework that
supported the brazier a few inches above the floor. My mother would decant hot
coals into the brazier and cover the table with a floor-length tablecloth made
of green felt. On cold afternoons she would pull up a chair, lift the cloth
over her lap, rest her feet on the edge of the brazier, and sew or read in
comfort in our otherwise unheated apartment. For the </span><i style="font-size: 18.6667px;">réveillon</i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">, she
covered the felt cloth with a smaller, white Belgian-lace cloth.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The most important aspect of
the </span><i style="font-size: 18.6667px;">réveillon </i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">wasn’t food, but romance. She and my father had to match the
elegance of the tablecloth, the starched napkins, the candles (which we
normally reserved for brownouts, a frequent occurrence in the years after the
Spanish Civil War), and the cut-glass goblets.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I desperately wanted to see
this part of the preparations, so well before midnight my mother put on her black,
floor-length evening dress. It was fitted at the waist, and fell straight to
the floor with a pleat at the back. The <i>décolletage</i> was modest, and the narrow
sleeves reached to her elbow (my family was as conservative in dress as it was
liberal in displays of affection). She wore pearls around her neck and her
white fur stole around her shoulders. The latter was not for show. In winter, whenever
she wasn’t sitting at the brazier my mother was always cold.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">She had my father dress up
too. The only hitch was that my father’s dress clothes—his tailcoat and white
piqué vest and bow tie—were also his work clothes, but he nevertheless looked
romantic in them. For a moment they stood smiling side by side in front of the
brazier table so I could admire them, and then they sent me to bed.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">How is it that I
remember, as clearly as if I had been there, my mother and father drinking
champagne and feeding each other grapes with each stroke of midnight, and then
dancing to my father’s favorite slow foxtrot (“Night and day, you are the one…”),
her head on his shoulder, his mustache tickling her neck? It must have been the
glow on their faces as they let me see them in their glory, which even to my
childish eyes held all the rest—the wine, the candles, the grapes, and the
dance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLxoPfIojsxA9LSGFkbRPbd3qJqqyNSyLeDjs-Q8QmolA2a0H83hxlCwVnR_S8axdEd0jN5TnRqUL86LiFcqTzhOtayT8iRVIsiLCID-pnOfWWM4zEfrayigzq0O9w-tqhjREvRprdpb4B/s1930/morenewyearseve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1930" data-original-width="1390" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLxoPfIojsxA9LSGFkbRPbd3qJqqyNSyLeDjs-Q8QmolA2a0H83hxlCwVnR_S8axdEd0jN5TnRqUL86LiFcqTzhOtayT8iRVIsiLCID-pnOfWWM4zEfrayigzq0O9w-tqhjREvRprdpb4B/s320/morenewyearseve.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-47624859019862891552021-06-30T11:20:00.003-04:002021-06-30T11:20:46.969-04:00Of Eggs and Hens<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">When I said goodbye to my little
flock and had to resort to getting my eggs cold from the supermarket cooler instead
of warm from the nest, I made sure to choose cartons that said that the hens who
laid those eggs were “free-range” or, at the very least, “cage-free.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Temple Grandin, that patron
saint of farm animals, writes that battery hens are the most mistreated of all
livestock. The suffering of cattle in feedlots is nothing compared to the misery
of hens imprisoned in tight individual cages, deprived of natural light and food,
forced to lay without regard for seasonal rhythms, and slaughtered after a
couple of years.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">There was a time in my life
when I made mayonnaise from scratch, in the blender, with garlic and olive oil,
and eggs from my own lovelies. But when I was reduced to buying it at the store,
I forgot to think about the hens whose eggs were used in its manufacture. Then
one day, reading labels, I found mayonnaise made with eggs from cage-free hens,
from the biggest producer on the planet, Hellmann’s.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Not that cage-free hens lead
an idyllic life. They don’t run around on grass, peck at bugs, or preen their
feathers in the sun. They spend their lives in huge rooms filled with hundreds of
their peers, making the most horrific din. Still, it’s far better than those
cages.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I bought the jar of Hellmann’s
and took it home. It tasted like ordinary mayo, but I felt better as I spread
it on my bread. Then, on my next trip to the store, I saw a new product on the shelf,
a mayonnaise dressing from the same manufacturer that, the label said, was made
with olive oil.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I am a devotee of olive oil. As
a child, one of my favorite foods was “<i>pa amb oli i xocolata</i>,” the
all-time Catalan after-school snack: a thick slice of crusty bread sprinkled
with dark, aromatic olive oil, accompanied with a chunk of almost-bitter
chocolate. (If you’ve never tried it, it beats Hershey’s by a mile.)</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">When the AMA discovered the
benefits of the Mediterranean diet, olive oil ranked first on its list of
panaceas. A powerful antioxidant, the oil is supposed to be good for the heart,
the brain, the gut, and the immune system. It fights infection, lessens the
risk of strokes and certain cancers, combats pain and inflammation, helps
prevent diabetes and, because it keeps blood sugar levels stable, may help you
lose weight. Not surprisingly, it’s even good for your mood.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I was in the kitchen putting
away the olive oil mayo when I realized that I hadn’t checked whether its eggs also came
from cage-free hens. What if I had bought mayonnaise that was good for me but
bad for the hens?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The days are long gone when
one could go to the store and choose stuff based on whether it looked good and
how much it cost. I had barely mastered the secrets of tuna casserole when I
learned that most of the foods available in the supermarket were bursting with possibly
lethal substances. The first culprit, identified in the 1970s, was salt (would
give you heart attacks), followed in the 1980s by fat (ditto, plus you would
look awful), followed by sugar (pure poison, and ubiquitous), followed by
hormones (would give you breasts if you were a man, cancer if you were a woman),
pesticides, and the growing awareness of what our food system was doing to the
welfare of animals.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Trips to the supermarket
became exercises in defensive warfare against industrial farming, food conglomerates,
and big business, all of whom were bent on doing me maximum harm for their
maximum profit. And now here I was in the kitchen, holding my jar of Hellmann’s,
about to face a moral choice between the welfare of millions of hens and my own.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">But like Abraham about to
sacrifice his son at God’s command, I was spared the dreadful choice. A close look
at the label informed me that <i>all</i> Hellmann’s mayonnaises are made
exclusively with, as they put it, “cage-free eggs.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">After a year when good news
has been scarcer than, well, hen’s teeth, I clutched the Hellmann’s jar to my breast.
Could it really be that one of America’s major food producers had both my
welfare and that of the female chicken at heart? Alternatively, could it be
that consumer pressure had inspired Hellmann’s move to use olive oil, and eggs
from cage-free birds?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Whatever the reason—and I
suspect it’s #2—it gives me hope. Maybe the next target for us consumers could be
the bull calves that are born each year to keep their mothers lactating. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heaven knows I sympathize with the plight of
dairy farmers, but the sight every spring of farms with dozens of calves in rows of individual “calf igloos” may well drive me to veganism. In a nation that sends robots to Mars, surely there is a way we can have our cheese and eat
it, with a clear conscience.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTsiolE20srqsPP3XI1fAxqbzV97gyj3BZ0RGk6UN7nrVfETnh6cnysi4pmYln1plu9VaIPhYVwVTqWTS9Lq0n1V0XCzpqYFZvKl69ZPdJtO9vG_o48xqKGVyMLX9u9hPw19V6IC4oK7wD/s1418/hens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1418" data-original-width="1139" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTsiolE20srqsPP3XI1fAxqbzV97gyj3BZ0RGk6UN7nrVfETnh6cnysi4pmYln1plu9VaIPhYVwVTqWTS9Lq0n1V0XCzpqYFZvKl69ZPdJtO9vG_o48xqKGVyMLX9u9hPw19V6IC4oK7wD/s320/hens.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-49751997587044304842021-06-23T11:42:00.001-04:002021-06-23T11:42:15.988-04:00Reading...Reading...<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Reading is my vice. If I’m
not writing or drawing or making smoothies for lunch or walking Bisou, I’m reclining
on cushions, reading. I’m not proud of this. Even though I mostly read what the
culture considers “good” books, and reading is supposed to engage the mind more
actively than watching TV, I know I should read less.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I read to get away from the
vicissitudes of daily life, from worries about the future, and above all I read
to get a break from what Jung called the endless “circumambulation of the
self.” And I read for company--the company of the author, whose voice reaches
me across space and time and opens doors to worlds that I would otherwise never
know. Sometimes, when bits of those worlds turn out to be almost exact replicas
of bits of my own world, I feel a shock of recognition, and the author and I
become fast friends.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I especially like it if my author
friend has published many books, so that I can spend months in her company. I
fell in love with Iris Murdoch’s mind, and with the way she invents enormously
intelligent characters who are at the same time enormously foolish. Luckily for
me, she wrote 26 novels. I felt bereft when I reached the final one (<i>Jackson’s
Dilemma,</i> written as she began her decline into dementia), so I read them
all again. A year or so later, missing her company, I went back for a third
reading.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Then there is Anthony
Trollope, who wrote 47 novels on his daily train commute to his job with the
British postal service. I don’t think I’ve read them all yet, but I’m almost
there. Trollope’s characters, unlike those of his contemporary, Dickens, are
never wholly saints or sinners, but complicated mixtures of both. I don’t know whether
Trollope was a good man, but I don’t see how anyone so fully in sympathy with humans
in all their imperfections could be anything but kind.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I am not a fiction writer, yet
certain novelists teach me to write. At the moment, I’m reading my way through
Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series (25 novels), in the order in which they
were written. I care very little about who murdered whom, or how the endearing
Wexford solved the crime. But I am agog at Rendell’s rendering of physical
detail. She tells us how every character, no matter how minor, looks, speaks,
and is dressed; how houses are furnished, from wallpaper to floor coverings; how
gardens bloom or wither in various seasons. And she’s wonderful on weather,
especially rain, as one would guess, given her nationality. How did she manage,
as she built her complicated edifice of scenes and clues, to have the mental
space and imagination to write all those descriptions?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">And then there are the
writers who make me laugh, to whom I devoutly give thanks every time I open one
of their books. I read them mostly for therapy, since I’m not sure that it’s
possible to learn to write humor (it’s either in your DNA, or it isn’t). At difficult
points in my life you can calculate my distress levels by the number of P.G.
Wodehouse novels and short-story collections on my bedside table.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Aided and abetted in my vice
by my Kindle, which can waft almost any book in the world to me in the middle
of the night in the middle of a blizzard, I read my life away. My electronic
library contains 496 volumes, safely stored where they never need dusting.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">At night, lying in bed Kindle
in hand, I tell myself that I should turn off the light and go to sleep. True,
reading is good for writers, but it can also replace writing, and that is a
danger for me. And I think about Cervantes’ warning, in <i>Don Quixote</i>, against
other dangers of excessive reading. Enamored of novels of chivalry, Don Quixote
sold his land to buy books, and spent day and night reading volume after volume.
Eventually, Cervantes tells us, “as a result of too much reading and not enough
sleep, his brain dried up, and he went mad.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I’m not there yet, but some
days my brain does feel a little “dry,” and I worry that I might end up like my
compatriot Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE6vyLIBt9aL0HvCMvHtt40oFi08ZgykVlQLJsDFls4UawcOqUJqli1kIgCnwVF5XD5V-sUL0vN6JDSemSKt8_Ijd0ZB8Zpc20o7yNwSsB0RC6LxgbKdEvFYzD6s8QbHWQCgbu_vHKWNu-/s905/reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="905" data-original-width="845" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE6vyLIBt9aL0HvCMvHtt40oFi08ZgykVlQLJsDFls4UawcOqUJqli1kIgCnwVF5XD5V-sUL0vN6JDSemSKt8_Ijd0ZB8Zpc20o7yNwSsB0RC6LxgbKdEvFYzD6s8QbHWQCgbu_vHKWNu-/w187-h200/reading.jpg" width="187" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-32366731116464165012021-06-16T16:26:00.000-04:002021-06-16T16:26:28.253-04:00Miss Daisy at the Wheel<p> <span style="font-size: 14pt;">I was seven before I could
tie my shoes, twelve before I learned to tell time, and almost twenty when I
got my driver’s license. I can’t account for the first two delays, but the
third one was partly due to my own MeToo story. When I turned eighteen my
father, tired of chauffeuring me around, decided that it was time I learned to
drive. Although he had the patience required to be my violin teacher, he knew
his limits, and he signed me up for lessons at a driving school in Birmingham,
Alabama.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">It was late spring, and already
sweltering. The air was heavy with the scent of magnolias, and the mockingbirds
were in full cry. The instructor was a skinny, youngish guy wearing a crew-cut,
t-shirt, and shorts, and when he saw me, his eyes lit up. “Why sure,” he
drawled, “I’ll be happy to teach a pretty girl like you to drive.” (FYI, I was
no Miss Alabama contestant. Just a healthy, well-nourished young woman.) He
opened the driver’s door for me, “Just set right down, honey, and make yourself
comfortable,” he grinned.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I sat behind the wheel, but
was not comfortable. I was in a state of terror lest I cause the car to buck
when I let out the clutch, as had happened during my father’s first and only attempt
to teach me. Add to that the close proximity of my leering instructor and the sultriness
of the afternoon, and all I knew was that I wanted run out of there, beg my father’s
forgiveness, and possibly become a nun.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“How did your lesson go?” my
father asked when he came to pick me up.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“It was terrible. I hated it!
I’ll never learn,” I moaned. It didn’t even occur to me to tell him the real
reason for my discomfiture. To us girls in the 1960s, sexual harassment was
another of those annoyances that came with being female, like
menstruation.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Gritting my teeth, the
following week I went back for an encore: the heat, the instructor’s
compliments (“That’s a real nice outfit you’re wearing!”), the bucking car. Then,
miraculously, a reprieve: my parents decided to send me to Barcelona for the summer,
albeit on the condition that I continue my driving lessons there.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">This time the instructor was
older and bigger than the Birmingham guy, and even more thrilled to have me in
the tiny Fiat with him. It wasn’t as hot, though, and my clutching and shifting
had improved a bit. But when the stares and the compliments progressed to pats
on the arm, I cancelled the rest of my lessons, left the city, and spent the
rest of the summer riding my bike on the dusty roads near my grandparents’
farm.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In Birmingham that fall, my
father took me back to the driving school. My first instructor was gone, however,
and the new teacher was a (to me) elderly gentleman who cared more about my
driving than my looks and who, at the end of the first lesson, said
reassuringly, “Don’t worry. You’ll make a fine little ol’ driver someday.” A couple
of weeks later, having demonstrated my ability to parallel park on a hill, I
got my license.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Unfortunately my father,
having watched me maneuver a shopping cart in the A&P, concluded that I was
still a danger behind the wheel, and sent me back for more lessons. The elderly
instructor had the good grace not to laugh when he saw me coming.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But his prophecy was
accurate. More than half a century later, not only am I a fine little ol’
driver; I am a fine little ol’ lady driver. For I drive like a little old lady,
the way I imagine Miss Daisy (of <i>Driving Miss Daisy</i>) would have driven
if she had been behind the wheel.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Gone are the days of shifting
and double-clutching and parallel parking. Like the rest of the world, I now
drive an automatic with a camera that shows me where I am when I back up, which
is handy because I am no longer tall enough to see over the backseat. The car
helpfully flashes lights at me if I’m about to make an imprudent lane
change—not that I change lanes unless absolutely necessary. Left to myself, I
pick a lane and remain faithful to it until I arrive at my destination. And the
back-up camera gets little use, since I avoid parking anywhere I’ll have to
back out of, even if it means having to skate over an icy parking lot to get to
the store. As for parallel parking, one of Vermont’s many charms is that, with
only 600k inhabitants in the state, there is hardly ever the need for it.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Safety first is my motto, and
I feel safest if I’m going under 40mph, which means avoiding four-lane
highways, of which there are blessedly few in this state. In fact, except
during mud season, I’m happiest on a dirt road that, but for the occasional
milk truck, is free of scary semis and people in a hurry, and winds calmly from
woods to fields, offering views of pasturing cows, sheep, and the occasional
alpaca.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">My only fear on those dirt
roads is of cyclists, of which there are way too many around here. I feel
foolish following one up a hill at 5mph, scared to pass because I can’t see
what’s coming at me in the opposite direction. And when I do pass one, I’m
tormented by visions of his or her keeling over, like the <i>Monty Python</i>
guy on the tricycle, right into my path.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i>Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,/O,
what a panic’s in thy breastie!</i>, Robert Burns cooed to the field mouse whose nest he had upturned with his plow. Except for the sleek part, two centuries later the poem is a spot-on
picture of me as I drive down the alarming roads of life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF8h1dS6RLyCLP5GNAaNHwXluJxgVSCJfrj8N3Ceygm4Rd_j9aI4Dcal9jGElJlx6VYu4Qobs0Et84IiqG-mNSZ8e3OXXLJsxsmOPneOktN_DerermQmuFhKs0jdR3rBu1JQ8lNuxrJlty/s1055/driving+blg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1043" data-original-width="1055" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF8h1dS6RLyCLP5GNAaNHwXluJxgVSCJfrj8N3Ceygm4Rd_j9aI4Dcal9jGElJlx6VYu4Qobs0Et84IiqG-mNSZ8e3OXXLJsxsmOPneOktN_DerermQmuFhKs0jdR3rBu1JQ8lNuxrJlty/w200-h198/driving+blg.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-74700051394834154472021-06-10T11:23:00.001-04:002021-06-10T11:23:36.056-04:00Wings<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The guardian angels have
flown off, who used to sit on our right shoulder or walk invisibly a step
ahead, keeping us from falling into ditches and temptation. They have
disappeared into the ether, tired of being ignored. Maybe they’ve become
extinct, due to habitat loss in the hearts of humans. Or perhaps they have simply
retreated, like a threatened bird species, to places where they feel safe, such
as the bottom of the ocean, or another planet altogether.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In this fractious age I long
for the company of my personal angel, assigned to me by God at birth, even
though I haven’t felt his presence since I was in pigtails. I remember one
summer, out in the fields with friends from my grandparents’ village. An
apartment-dwelling city kid, I stand hesitating at the edge of a creek as the
others jump across. One of the girls advises, “say a prayer to your guardian
angel and you won’t fall in.” How can I ever recover that trust?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But I don’t only want my own angel
back. I want guardian angels for members of Congress of both parties, for
everybody in the White House, and for the nine Supreme Court justices. I want
guardian angels for doctors and nurses and nurses’ aides, and mothers and
fathers, teachers, border-crossing refugees, police officers, farmers, and pet
owners. I want guardian angels for animals wild and domestic, and for forests
and houseplants and vegetable gardens.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">How can we get them back? The
ancient Greeks left jars of milk and honey at the local spring to make sure its
naiad would keep the water flowing through the summer. But how do you lure an
angel? Some kind of nectar comes to mind, like the sugar water one puts out to
attract hummingbirds. But angels being pure spirits, food won’t do the trick. What
about angel decoys? If putting out a duck statue causes ducks to come plunging out
of the sky, we could maybe attract angels by becoming angelic ourselves. But
that is too much like pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, which are feeling
pretty frayed these days. Maybe the desire for an angel’s return might be
enough, since that is all that is in our power to offer, just as the simple desire
for union with God is said to be the most efficacious kind of prayer.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In the meantime, I’m making
an effort to pay attention to the possible hidden presence of angels in my
midst. For example, I’m wondering about the wood thrush that sings its heart
out all evening long in the maple tree behind our cottage. I have never heard a
thrush sing so close, or so loudly and persistently, night after night. It
gives me goosebumps, the way he harmonizes with himself (he does this by
controlling the two branches of his syrinx, or voice-box, independently). When he
pauses between songs, other thrushes answer him in the woods beyond. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The song of the thrush sounds
unlike any other music on earth, and more like what I imagine to be the music
of the spheres, coming from somewhere out in the universe, piercing and liquid
and sweet. Or maybe it’s the voice of an angel—angels in the Bible were
notorious for adopting disguises—warbling endlessly at me, saying something
like: Pay attention! Don’t think so much. We’re all around you. We never left.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">If a state of total alertness
combined with total delight is what being in the presence of a heavenly being feels
like, then it may well be that the singer in the maple tree and his fellows in
the woods beyond are in fact the angels that we thought were gone.</span> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqQ-QTCYt_hbzzm3EAlrmtZ1GmDqD-4WAEPBEKAWdEW3a5RnYJ0bJuF6ZirVhdayHESd0FPfPSEr9Ds2H6bBcygYYoyu7TaaJCajqszpDSW0FFJbyv12X4R5PPeeSlkTlNI7yyJ0MZ4JtK/s1246/angelbird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1189" data-original-width="1246" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqQ-QTCYt_hbzzm3EAlrmtZ1GmDqD-4WAEPBEKAWdEW3a5RnYJ0bJuF6ZirVhdayHESd0FPfPSEr9Ds2H6bBcygYYoyu7TaaJCajqszpDSW0FFJbyv12X4R5PPeeSlkTlNI7yyJ0MZ4JtK/w200-h191/angelbird.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-30507367135249746842021-06-02T10:47:00.000-04:002021-06-02T10:47:09.202-04:00Bedtime Rituals<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Sometimes, when I can’t go to
sleep at night, I repeat the prayer that my mother taught me when I could barely talk, “Guardian Angel, sweet companion, don’t forsake me….” As I begin to
drop off, the toddler that I once was rises up within me, and I feel again in
my tongue and palate the effort to form those words, as my mother slowly
enunciates each phrase.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Since my mother thought I
might catch cold from the chilly floor tiles, I did not use to say this prayer
on my knees, but flat on my back in bed, with the covers up to my chin and
tightly tucked all around. A year or two later, my mother added a P.S. to the
Guardian Angel prayer: “Dear Lord, please watch over everyone. Make sure Daddy
has plenty of work, and make me a really good girl.” When she explained that I
could hasten the arrival of a little brother or sister by praying hard for it,
I added a P.P.S. and kept at it until I was sixteen, when that prayer was finally
answered.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But prayers were only part of
the bedtime rituals. The sickly child of a hyper-vigilant mother, I slept in my
parents’ bedroom until I was in second grade. Their bedroom was at one end of a
long hallway, and the living room where my mother awaited my father’s arrival
from his nightly rehearsals or performances was miles away at the other end. At
bedtime, I hated to let her go. I dreaded the fading sound of her heels on the
tiles as she walked away from me, and I was afraid of waking up alone in the
dark with one of my eternal ailments.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">As she quietly made her way
towards the door, I would ask for reassurance, “Where is my cold?”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“On the North Pole,” she would
answer.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“Where is my earache?”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“Oh, very, very far. In India,
I think,” she would say, her hand on the doorknob.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Then, just before she, like the
sun, vanished until morning, I would ask, “And my fever, where is it?”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“It’s not even on this earth.
It’s on the moon!” and she would close the door, leaving me with only my
Guardian Angel for company until she and my father tiptoed in hours later.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I wonder, in retrospect, did my
parents find my presence next to their bed an impediment to making love? They
were too happy as a couple to have abstained all those years until I moved to
my own bedroom, but on the other hand I never heard any sounds that struck me
as unusual. They probably counted on my being a sound sleeper, like all children.
I do remember hearing them whisper in the dark, and making whispering sounds myself
(bsss…bsss…bsss) to alert them to my wakefulness.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I assume that it was my
mother and not my father who insisted on my sleeping in their bedroom until I
was of school-age. Yes, I had lots of childhood illnesses, but except for the
measles, none was life-threatening. What made her so anxious that she had to
keep me with her even during the night? Shortly before she died she said to me,
“those happy years when you were little and Daddy and I were young, I always
felt that God was up in heaven, holding a big stick and getting ready to bring
it down on our heads.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Those happy years were less
than a decade after the Spanish Civil War, a period during which, living near
the front lines and having to hide in ditches to escape bombardments, she had
feared for her life every day. So it is no wonder that for her the sudden
happiness of married love, relative security, and a child of her own felt like
fragile gifts that could only survive because of her constant watchfulness.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I don’t know whether our
prayers, and my sleeping body at hand’s reach in the dark reassured her. I hope
they did. But all these years later the Guardian Angel prayer, when I recite it
like a mantra, continues to comfort the anxious child that lives within me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMR_6RUP-vF8wWQ8-msrtFrjKBhhLhhptbQcG98S0sijNxY-jPn7kbJxeNFDOZaCgc0YNM7cigMgKG1ld0Brwcmngvs6_xeQwItd_JsKU1-O_m8RpP7PK2LMW8pPozqzb8Bcyud2VxWp_L/s1270/angel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1270" data-original-width="1012" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMR_6RUP-vF8wWQ8-msrtFrjKBhhLhhptbQcG98S0sijNxY-jPn7kbJxeNFDOZaCgc0YNM7cigMgKG1ld0Brwcmngvs6_xeQwItd_JsKU1-O_m8RpP7PK2LMW8pPozqzb8Bcyud2VxWp_L/w159-h200/angel.jpg" width="159" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-74314024765031468832021-05-27T11:10:00.000-04:002021-05-27T11:10:20.458-04:00Pause<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">In our family it was almost
considered a sign of intelligence: the lightning-quick flare of temper, the
instant reaction to a perceived slight or irritation, followed by a gush of
eloquence recapitulating the offender’s past misdeeds and setting out principles
of moral philosophy for her future improvement. The quick-temper gene came from
my mother’s father, a usually mild-mannered man who would unpredictably erupt
at minor annoyances and who passed the gift on to my mother, at whose knees I
learned the art of venting wrath promptly and with panache.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdn0jd7mMSs-v8weJtnzDZ4qUOxwXRrOyol8gd7WIrRr0Xxmpjm2cEdF9eKabwuxVR-tLrCl4JLodI90J6TuiK9GMVtvK4K6VVEg41RdCY7dAOD2Yw9Cyo4NgDsL1nsHPxyuPHebXEfBII/s1522/pause.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1522" data-original-width="1092" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdn0jd7mMSs-v8weJtnzDZ4qUOxwXRrOyol8gd7WIrRr0Xxmpjm2cEdF9eKabwuxVR-tLrCl4JLodI90J6TuiK9GMVtvK4K6VVEg41RdCY7dAOD2Yw9Cyo4NgDsL1nsHPxyuPHebXEfBII/w144-h200/pause.jpg" width="144" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>I am talking here about strictly
verbal expressions of anger, as at our house even the slamming of doors was
forbidden. Still, anger is anger, however it is expressed, and though manifesting
it feels as good as scratching a mosquito bite, to its recipient it feels like an
attack by a horsefly.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">My meditation practice is
outstanding in its sloppiness. I go through periods when I meditate
occasionally, and periods when I meditate every day. But sloppy or rigorous, in
some thirty years of sitting, the twenty minutes on my cushion have hardly
changed at all. Unlike me, the monkeys in my mind have neither aged nor slowed down,
but continue to leap and race through the forest of my neurons until the bell dings
and the session is over.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">This so discouraged me that
at one point I was ready to give up. Didn’t Einstein (or somebody) say that
doing the same thing over and over in hopes of obtaining different results is
the definition of insanity? But then I learned that one should not expect to
enjoy the fruits of meditation while meditating. Rather, they are most likely to
make themselves felt during the times when we are simply going about our daily
life. If we notice that we are less quick to anger, if we pause before we jump
to slap away an irritant, that is a sign that meditation is working.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Here is what Viktor Frankl,
whose wisdom was forged in the terror and suffering of Auschwitz, says about
that pause: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is
our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our
freedom” (<i>Man’s Search for Meaning</i>).</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">That space is what I am
looking for, the blessed nanosecond in which on good days the effect of my sloppy
meditations comes into play, and I choose to forego belting out an angry aria
in favor of a more moderate response, or simply silence. True, that tiny pause
doesn’t feel nearly as good as letting fly a tirade, but at the same time I can
say that, although I often regret the tirade, I have never regretted the pause.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The pause does not feel especially
difficult or unpleasant. It feels like a little nudge, something inside gently reminding
me to please just wait a second before I react. But it does feel strange. It
doesn’t feel quite like the real me, the me that is quick to put things into
words, especially if they are angry things.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Sometimes the urge to scratch
the itch is too strong. It drowns out the soft inner voice, and I lash out in
the old way. But that’s o.k., because the universe is sure to send me lots more
chances to practice the pause, to dive beneath the current and sink to where
there is stillness and, for this one moment, peace.</span> </p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-53992751592282531222021-05-19T18:44:00.004-04:002021-05-19T18:44:39.529-04:00On Bliss<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ever since he said it, I have been annoyed by
Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss.” Perhaps it’s envy of those
whose good fairies whispered at their cradle, “Little one, pay no attention to
what people tell you. Do what you love and all will be well.” I did not have a
fairy bending over my cradle. Instead, I had a guardian angel, who said, “Be a
good girl and do as you’re told.” Sometimes I wish that I had had that fairy,
or even Joseph Campbell, at my cradle. What would my life have been like? Where
would I be now?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The fairies have won out over the guardian
angels, and today’s children are encouraged to follow their bliss as routinely
as they’re told to eat their veggies. This is not without its problems. For those
who were brought up as I was, there was comfort in believing that if we were
good and did as we were told all would be well. Within those boundaries, we
enjoyed a certain freedom, especially the freedom of not having to make big decisions.
A child obliged to follow her bliss has a heavy responsibility on her skinny
shoulders.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">History is crammed with tales of geniuses who
followed their bliss, usually at great cost—a cost often paid by those who
loved them. I’m thinking of the otherwise tender-hearted Rilke, who abandoned
his wife and infant daughter to dedicate himself entirely to poetry. I’m
thinking of Tolstoy, who after his conversion made his wife’s life a purgatory so
that he could follow the new dictates of his conscience. I’m even thinking of the
good Saint Francis, who did not hesitate to renounce his father in the public
square in order to pursue Lady Poverty. And what about the merely talented, the
poets and painters in their garrets, the buskers on their street corners—how heavy
a price are they paying for their bliss?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Given its uncertain results, it’s surprising
that Campbell’s short quote had such an effect on our culture. It precipitated an
avalanche of authors, gurus, and graduation speakers who urged the multitudes
to look deep inside themselves and find their path to rapture. But perhaps Campbell’s
idea came at the right moment, when for the first time in the history of
first-world nations the children of street sweepers could become astronauts. And
it was also a welcome reaction against the unthinking compliance that religion
and society had for centuries regarded as the highest form of virtue,
especially for women.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But this bliss advice should be administered
with care, or it can produce anxiety in the young (what if I can’t figure
out what my bliss is?) and regret in the old (I never found my bliss, and now
it’s too late!). Wouldn’t we be better off not aiming quite so high? The belief
that happiness is inversely proportional to expectations has a long history, from
Buddhists, to Stoics, to some modern psychologists. This is not to say that we
should encourage complacency in the young, or even in the old. As Aristotle and
my mother advised, moderation in all things.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe the problem lies in the word “bliss,” with
its sensuous sibilants, which connote a heaven-on-earth, floating-on-air, uninterrupted
felicity such as even Saint Teresa of Avila experienced only momentarily in her
mystical transports. Instead of following our bliss as if it were a balloon floating
just beyond our reach, a more reasonable practice might be learning to find it
right here, today, in whatever is afforded us by the brains, talent, and luck
that we’ve been granted, and be content.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0T_bYekJLQ8LUWQIHEqUiEuLrqq0w58s3ER11Nz_jHPclLwfuXwIzaPlWE5_b23_BwWrc_zxyJgriIdPmD0sK6hoQGZSHkJgPltzkCduiDBxneu36qJ0bt2SluhJrP6mTqvzFlPujJyVj/s1746/bliss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1746" data-original-width="1387" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0T_bYekJLQ8LUWQIHEqUiEuLrqq0w58s3ER11Nz_jHPclLwfuXwIzaPlWE5_b23_BwWrc_zxyJgriIdPmD0sK6hoQGZSHkJgPltzkCduiDBxneu36qJ0bt2SluhJrP6mTqvzFlPujJyVj/w254-h320/bliss.jpg" width="254" /></a></div><br /><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span><p></p>
<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span> </p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-68772162427121959242021-05-14T12:16:00.000-04:002021-05-14T12:16:20.828-04:00Rethinking Showers<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Good grooming, advises Amy
Vanderbilt in the 1967 edition of her book of etiquette, which I received as a
wedding present, means “a daily, and often twice daily, shower or bath, [and] fresh
underwear and stockings daily or twice daily….” </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Even in my most
perfectionistic moments I was not insane enough to follow her advice to the
letter, but since my arrival in the land of endless hot water nine years earlier,
I had taken to heart the American custom of daily showering and frequent
shampooing. “You’ve washed your hair </span><i style="font-size: 14pt;">again</i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">?” my mother would exclaim as I
struggled to fit the dryer hood over my twenty-seven rollers. She was also
amazed that, along with my schoolmates, I felt obliged to wear a different
outfit every day, which meant tossing everything I had worn the day before into
the washing machine.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Back then, America’s bathroom
shelves mostly featured a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. But in the
ensuing decades bath products proliferated to include soaps for different kinds
of skin, shampoos for different kinds of hair, conditioners (both rinse-out and
leave-in), and body scrubs, butters, and gels. Showers grew longer as we
applied the right product to the right body part and then made sure that whatever
we had slathered on was sluiced down the drain.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Now, trillions of gallons of
water and mountains of plastic bottles later, things may be changing. According
to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/health/shower-bathing-pandemic.html?searchResultPosition=1">New York Times</a>,
during the pandemic many Americans stopped showering every day, and were amazed
when their body did not exude pestilential smells, their skin did not erupt in
gruesome infections, and their scalp did not drip grease onto their shoulders.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">On the contrary, many people
who had been bedeviled with dry, flaky, itchy skin noticed that the condition
improved when they stopped scrubbing every square inch of their bodies every
single day. And, when given a break from too-frequent shampoos and blow drying,
formerly lank, straw-like hair showed its gratitude by growing glossier and
more manageable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">With an eight-minute shower
using up to 17 gallons of water, not to mention the electricity to heat that
water, plus the products being washed down the drain, the trend towards
less-frequent showering is good news for the environment. But why stop there?
As long as we’re moderating our cleaning compulsions, we should think about
laundry.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">If we had to wash clothes by
hand we would think twice before tossing a shirt we’ve only worn once into the dirty
clothes basket. But since washing machines are here to do the work, that carefree
flick of the wrist at the end of the day requires less time and energy
than looking at the shirt, deciding if it can be worn again, and hanging it
carefully on a hanger.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Swedish designer <a href="https://gsw.gudrunsjoden.com/us/gudruns-world/miljo_kla-dig-miljovanligt">Gudrun Sjoden</a> </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">believes that we should reevaluate our laundry habits: “Generally we</span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">all
wash far too often! Wear your clothes until they are dirty, before which you
can air your clothes and remove individual stains.” I know how to air a
grievance, but I’m not sure how you air a shirt (by hanging it out the window?)
but lately I have taken to hanging outfits I’ve worn once or twice in the
bathroom overnight to get rid of whatever noxious odors may be clinging to them.
As for removing individual stains by hand and then wearing the item again, I
haven’t reached that level of ecological virtue yet.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">This is a world away from Amy
Vanderbilt, who advised us to “wear a simple, <i>starched</i> [my italics] house
dress, a clean one daily, if you must do housework…” Once the house was
sparkling, the dress went into the hamper, since changing for dinner was one
of the hallmarks of gracious living: “Fresh clothes and make-up, even if you
are to be alone with the children for a simple meal, are psychologically sound
and bring a needed change in the day’s pace.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Her writing bursts with the exuberance
of an era when belief in progress and the endless availability of resources was
at its peak. It is also a celebration of indoor plumbing, washing machines, vacuum
cleaners, and other mod cons that made possible this manic changing of dresses
and stockings, showering and grooming, even in the absence of domestic staff. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">No wonder so many housewives
in mid-century America became addicted to Valium. Today our stress comes from a
different source: the knowledge of the havoc that our way of life has wreaked on
the planet, and our obligation to do something about it right now, by whatever
means are available to each of us, even if it requires giving up habits that
would make Amy turn in her grave.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlA0_-tLKkKcYKhqIun7Flvfngfo0ue0zwUW4pBp2diKsUXXFcw8moZZcNhVlimFnBHiFVfGQCODihQnzBMg7XIPY_uQsivM7J77BXMHRKoCxBp3pY66-1v-KZNett-_2GyQnlaCfWTSnt/s1638/Franciscus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1638" data-original-width="1225" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlA0_-tLKkKcYKhqIun7Flvfngfo0ue0zwUW4pBp2diKsUXXFcw8moZZcNhVlimFnBHiFVfGQCODihQnzBMg7XIPY_uQsivM7J77BXMHRKoCxBp3pY66-1v-KZNett-_2GyQnlaCfWTSnt/w238-h320/Franciscus.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-56131156086727110802021-05-05T10:04:00.005-04:002021-05-05T10:04:57.586-04:00My Mother, on Beauty<p> <span style="font-size: 14pt;">When my mother turned
seventy, she said, “The trick at my age is not to try to look forty. The trick
is to be the best-looking seventy-year-old in the room.” When she turned
eighty, she told me that she had scheduled a “make-over” for herself. I
remember hiding a smile. My mother looked awfully good for her age, but a
make-over at eighty? What was she hoping for?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">She was more intensely aware
of people’s looks than anyone I’ve ever known. “Look at her with that long neck,”
she would say, tilting her chin to point out some unsuspecting woman waiting
for the bus. “She should at least wrap a scarf around it. And her poor husband with
his little short arms—his hands barely hang below his belt!” And she would
shake her head sadly, because there’s nothing that one can do about short arms.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">She focused on my appearance with
particular vehemence, but even though I complained bitterly, I benefitted from
her fixation. She had my teeth straightened, my eyes uncrossed, my flat feet corrected,
my acne tamed. The year I turned twelve, she got me my first girdle, and sent
me to have my braids cut off and my legs waxed. She worked tirelessly on my
posture and facial expression (“Don’t sit there with your mouth open. It’s not
an intelligent look.”) But though she wanted me to look as well as I possibly
could at twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, she was adamant that I not look a minute
older than her idea of what a twelve-, fourteen-, or sixteen-year-old should
look like. Hence, no stockings or straight skirts before fourteen, no lipstick
before sixteen. These were the fronts on which, since I cared more about
lipstick than braces, we fought our fiercest battles.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In the 1970s, when I was a
grown woman with a husband, two children, goats, chickens, and a profession,
she wrote me a letter expressing her concern that I might be in danger of
looking “like one of those farm wives I saw when I last visited you. That would
be a terrible thing! What would people think?” I might be cleaning out the
chicken house, but that was no reason not to look <i>soignée</i>.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">She was unsparing of her own
shortcomings in the looks department, but treated them with the insouciance of
one who knows she is the only star in her husband’s firmament. “Your father
must have loved me a lot,” she confided after she became a widow. “He was a leg
man, but he married me even though my legs are less than perfect, as you know.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">And I did know, because she
would comment ruefully about her legs, which were slightly bowed; her hips,
which were too wide; and “up here,” meaning her chest, which was too flat. But
about her appearance from the neck up, I heard no complaints, and rightly so.
She had a wide brow, thin, arched eyebrows above large eyes, a well-shaped
nose, and a jaw-line that retained its definition her entire life.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">She kept her beauty rituals
to a minimum: a slathering of Nivea at night, and in the daytime a little powder
and lipstick, and maybe a discreet slash of eyeliner at the outer corner of her
eyes. When she was going to the opera, she would curl her eyelashes, and follow
this with an application of Rimmel, the ur-mascara that came as a solid black cake
in a small flat box. You spat on the cake, rubbed the resulting paste with a little
brush, and applied it to your lashes. Then you took a pin and carefully
separated whatever clumps of mascara the brush had left behind. (Spitting on
the Rimmel cake, along with that graceful backwards twist of the torso to check
the straightness of stocking seams, seemed to me as a child to embody the
essence of femininity.)</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Other than scraping it off
her forehead—because she had somehow conceived the notion that a wide forehead was
a sign of intelligence—she didn’t do much about her light-brown, curly hair, which
she kept short. But this changed in the 1960s, when hair was expected to rise straight
up from the scalp before curving smoothly downwards into a balloon shape. After
watching me put my hair in jumbo rollers every night, she observed that in the
morning it did form that coveted balloon. But she was too fond of her comfort to
sleep on rollers, and she may also have wanted to spare my father the sight of
her lumpy head next to him on the pillow. Instead, she recruited me as her
hairdresser. After she washed her hair I would put it up in rollers, and fit the
hood of the portable hairdryer over them. When the hair was bone-dry, I would
take out the rollers and, very gently, because her scalp was sensitive and she
would yelp if I tugged, tease, spray, and mold her hair into shape.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In her eighties she was
still, thanks to good hair and good bones, the best-looking eighty-year-old in
the room, so when she announced her plans to get a make-over, I wondered what
was going on. Shouldn’t she be satisfied that she didn’t look any worse? What
could any process, short of extensive plastic surgery, do to improve an
eighty-year-old face? I was in my fifties at the time, and as unable to put
myself in her place as if I had been a teenager.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I kept my doubts about the
make-over to myself, and the next time we spoke on the phone I asked how it had
gone. “It was a waste of time,” my mother said. “The woman kept repeating ‘We
must bring out your features!’ as she put blush on my cheeks and darkened my
eyebrows. I washed it all off when I got home. My features are all still there,
thank God, and they don’t need bringing out.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The features that enchanted
me as a child stayed reassuringly the same as she turned eighty-five and then
ninety, delineating to the end what had always been for me the face of love.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tNcXjDdyz05g08HnaVcviXEDlGdsf3NdfTjZnzmB4-Y1JaJz6wouosnQRrgTMeMgVEIx99YfWXrRxPqu6msaj9h3-HFQZnrmFxe-daTWBV34CksVh9gcxmYFXygdXS3kySnLSwEuOIyy/s1238/mother+beauty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1238" data-original-width="1174" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tNcXjDdyz05g08HnaVcviXEDlGdsf3NdfTjZnzmB4-Y1JaJz6wouosnQRrgTMeMgVEIx99YfWXrRxPqu6msaj9h3-HFQZnrmFxe-daTWBV34CksVh9gcxmYFXygdXS3kySnLSwEuOIyy/w189-h200/mother+beauty.jpg" width="189" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-12381345241099713982021-04-28T15:02:00.000-04:002021-04-28T15:02:28.230-04:00Curls vs. Waves<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I went on YouTube for advice
on my pandemic hair, which was last cut on February 5, 2020, and found dozens
of sites that help women to deal with curly hair. And not just deal
with it, but enhance it, embrace it, and glory in it.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I learned a lot. There are no
fewer than nine levels of curliness, ranging from loose waves to tight curls. Although
I came into this world with Level 3A, “soft curls,” almost a century of blow-drying had reduced me to Level 2A, or “loose waves.” But since I’ve been
letting my hair dry naturally during the pandemic, it has breathed a sigh of
relief and, all by itself, risen to Level 2B. According to the websites, with just the right kind of care
(and products), I could aspire to Level 2C, or “almost
curls.” The process sounded kind of like taking care of a plant, so I decided
to give it a try.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">But then I realized, from the
hundreds of comments on the instructional videos (who knew there were so many
women out there worrying about waves vs. curls?) that for a woman with wavy
hair to strive for curls can be regarded as a kind of cultural appropriation,
and makes her vulnerable to something called “wavy-hair shaming.”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">If you don’t believe me, here
is one of the exchanges, with the incendiary bits snuffed out: “Just because
tighter curls are <i>now</i> starting to become popular doesn’t mean you wavy
types can pop in and try to call your hair curly….” To which a wavy-haired
person responds, “<i>You’re</i> the prime example of wavy-hair shaming by a lot
of curly-haired people… People with curly hair are self-entitled [horrible
individuals] who think their hair is really unique and special...”</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Why am I tormenting myself
and you with these trivial tales? It’s because the curly/wavy hair wars spring
from the same aspects of human nature that are responsible for the other
kind of wars, the ones where people actually die.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Even if we someday attain
racial equality and gender parity, even after we grow to accept transsexual
people and people with handicaps, and old people, and people of other nationalities,
religions, and socioeconomic levels, we will be sure to latch onto <i>something
</i>else to make us feel apart from and superior to the rest of the herd.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Here is one example, drawn from
the supposedly innocent realm of childhood. My first-grade class, most of us
barely old enough to tie our shoelaces, is marching single file out of the
classroom into the schoolyard, and as we pass the kindergarteners going in the
opposite direction, a scornful chant erupts from our ranks: <i>lit-tle ba-bies,
lit-tle ba-bies…</i></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The urge to distinguish, to
separate, to draw a line between “us” and “not us” is deeply embedded in our
DNA. We are born with a depressing zero-sum mindset: I can only be beautiful/good
at math/chosen by God if you are less beautiful, less good at math, and
unchosen by God. This may have survival value for some species—if I push my fellow
hatchlings out of the nest there will be more worms for me—but it’s threatening
to do us humans in.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The day may come when, out of
boredom, the wave/curl warriors will put down their weapons. But then, what? Perhaps
pendulous earlobes will emerge as the next badge of beauty, and those with low-hanging
lobes will feel proud, and those without will feel miserable, and tug on theirs
to make them longer (which will make them subject to earlobe-shaming), until the
short-lobes decide to exult in their status and proclaim their superiority, and
it’s the long-lobes’ turn to feel bad.</span> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiv1XcsNX1ZCZ7zhZGGsVPEG_CZwd4-yqbmT9gAuQA1zD30Cb3P-8B3NRUQRU4hZkn6Vx3DDh-wTkXzMrJQnWYl3wxcprbxAh-atiVIbXNV8FEtr11NaIo18Fn8P022pbMwpUjva3zs5rZ/s1266/blog+image+143_NEW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1266" data-original-width="980" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiv1XcsNX1ZCZ7zhZGGsVPEG_CZwd4-yqbmT9gAuQA1zD30Cb3P-8B3NRUQRU4hZkn6Vx3DDh-wTkXzMrJQnWYl3wxcprbxAh-atiVIbXNV8FEtr11NaIo18Fn8P022pbMwpUjva3zs5rZ/s320/blog+image+143_NEW.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at Level 3A</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-43865296817680063682021-04-22T09:07:00.000-04:002021-04-22T09:07:19.754-04:00Organ Recitals<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“Then the podiatrist looked
at my little toe and said, ‘Lady, what you have is a…’” But just as things are
about to get interesting my friend claps her hand over her mouth and says, “I’m
sorry! I didn’t mean to bore you with an organ recital!” If you are a woman of
a certain age, you know that the phrase “organ recital” does not necessarily
refer to a performance of Bach in a cathedral.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Why do so many women feel
apologetic about mentioning a wonky knee or a sore neck? Though clearly in
distress, they smile through their pain and heroically refuse to talk about “unpleasant
things.” Even if their health concerns dominate their inner life, they think that
bringing up these issues is a failure of stoicism and an imposition on their
listeners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I disagree. Not only do I not
mind organ recitals, but I often find them entertaining and instructive. There are
myriad ways in which the aging body betrays us, and myriad ways in which each
individual chooses to deal with these betrayals. I think them all fascinating,
and not in a morbid way.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">However, as with the Bach recitals,
much depends on the performer. A whiny or self-pitying tone makes me want to
change the subject at the earliest opportunity, as does a solo that goes on and
on. But if told briefly, with a rueful smile and a sense of irony, these tales
have much to offer. They can be informative (who knew that aloe vera is good
for arthritis?), and they can also be inspiring. When someone recovering from major
surgery mentions that she’s just walked two miles, it puts my own complaints in
proportion and gives me the push I need to trudge all the way to the top of the
hill.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Listening to organ recitals is
one way in which we can support each other, too. It is no use pretending that
our bodies are not often on our minds, and if listening to a friend’s concerns makes
her feel less alone, I could do worse than lend her an ear. And when it’s my
turn at the instrument, it comforts me to know that I have a sympathetic
audience.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We are embodied creatures, destined
to experience pain. Animals instinctively isolate themselves when they are ill,
to keep predators from noticing their weakness. But we are verbal, social
beings, and the occasional organ recital, done moderately and in chosen company,
can be as healing and consoling as listening to Bach. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-85422287265394790792021-04-14T15:16:00.000-04:002021-04-14T15:16:40.645-04:00Ant Jihad (with apologies to E. O. Wilson)<p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">At first, only a few scouts showed
up in the mudroom. They ran discreetly along the base of the walls, and I was
not alarmed. "It's a sign of spring" I said to the cat Telemann. I
have never begrudged the occasional ant a few crumbs from my table. Ants don't
frighten me the way spiders do, and I admire their work ethic and
organizational talents. But soon those scouts were followed by an entire army,
an army that was marching towards the litter box.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The litter that I provide for Telemann
is the most ecologically pure on the planet, free from artificial scents, and
made of corn. It gives off a mild sweet smell, which is so lovely that when I
add fresh handfuls to the box Telemann has been known to take a taste. Now it
looked like, along with the rest of America, my ants were addicted to
corn-based sugars, and had sent a colonizing army to ensure an endless supply of
the stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In the past, I had dealt with ant incursions
with a spray of water mixed with a few drops of dish soap. This not only killed
the ants, but destroyed the pheromone trail that led others in their wake. It
was simple; it was green; and it always worked.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I happened to have a bottle of
the solution in the cabinet under the sink. I gave it a good shake, and sprayed
along the ant column. The little creatures scurried out of the way, trying to
avoid the deadly spray, then curled up in agony and eventually dwindled to
little black motionless specks, and I felt like a vengeful deity wreaking havoc
on hapless mortals. It was a miniature version of the kind of spectacle that I
cannot bear to watch on TV. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The soapy solution worked for a
while, but soon new battalions of ants arrived, and were making off with golden
nuggets of corn litter. I sprayed more abundantly this time, leaving little
slippery pools on the linoleum, then refilled my bottle and resprayed. But back
in the nest the ant draft boards were calling up fresh recruits, and the army
kept coming.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I googled DIY ant repellents.
The techniques ranged from spreading coffee grounds on the ant trails, to smothering
the insects under a paste of cornstarch and water. But the most popular
solutions involved the use of essential oils, especially peppermint. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I happened to have a bottle of
peppermint oil left over from an unsuccessful attempt to discourage field mice
in pre-Telemann days. These being desperate times, I ignored the instructions
to dilute the oil with water or witch hazel, and sprinkled the concentrated oil
directly on the ants.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">As with the soapy water, the
results were instantaneous, at least for the ants that came in contact with the
oil. The mudroom was now littered with tiny cadavers, which I left in the hope of
demoralizing the troops, but more still kept coming. I sprinkled more oil. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“What
on earth is that smell?” my spouse asked. “It makes my eyes water.” </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Not only did the entire house
smell like a bag of cough drops, but I was starting to worry about the stuff’s
effect on Telemann’s willingness to use the litter box. When he was a kitten
and I was trying to keep him away from a certain house plant, I had bought a
bottle of cat repellent. Its main ingredient was peppermint oil.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">If the ants were attracted by the
corn-based litter, the obvious solution was to switch to a different litter.
But I didn’t want a different litter. I wanted to stick with my ecologically
pure brand, and I didn’t want to disturb Telemann’s bathroom habits.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I returned to the DIY sites, some
of which sang the praises of white vinegar. I happened to have a gallon of it,
which I had bought in a vain attempt to control static cling in the laundry. I
dumped the soap solution out of the spray bottle and replaced it with vinegar.
The ants were no longer marching in columns, but had broken ranks and were
crisscrossing the mudroom floor, raping and pillaging. The ones dispatched to
colonize the kitchen had reached the cabinets, in search of the toaster.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I flooded the mudroom and the kitchen
with vinegar. Again, several ants perished on the spot, but more took their
place, ready to give their lives for corn litter. Now the house smelled like a
salad bowl. I was opening windows to air out the place when a friend came by. I
apologized for the smell and told her my sorry tale. “Why don’t you just get
some ant bait?” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">And so I did. I hid six cookie-shaped,
non-green, non-DIY bait dispensers in various spots in the mudroom and kitchen.
Within two days, the ants were gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Ant bait consists of an
attractant that is also a poison. The ants carry it back into their nest, where
eventually it exterminates the colony. The EPA allows the manufacturers to keep
the inert ingredients secret from the consumer. Who knows what environmental
outrage my ant baits perpetrated? Perhaps a titmouse ate a poisoned ant, and got
a stomach ache, or even died.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Should I have persevered with the
oil and vinegar? Should I have switched to a non-organic litter? Should I have learned
to coexist with my ants, and if so, how bad would things have gotten? Would
they finally have had their fill of cat litter and left of their own accord, or
would they have turned our cottage into a giant ant hill, like those termite
mounds in Africa?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The alacrity with which I jumped
on the ant bait solution has humbled me, and softened slightly my attitude towards
pesticide-spraying farmers and wolf-shooting ranchers. I still don’t approve of
what they’re doing, but I now know that there lurks in my supposedly green heart
the same hot rage that fuels their abuses.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjygOctpKQqe1JDx-GPBT6wX-qNureANCG6focw9E0s1-BCfEw_cPqySitcCY6kGgWo0C0zhQ8Gg4ecvEyUwT3Zr48ozOoecdmPpgiV5pTW2d4zLejK7HThT0vpGT4dPOga-1UgWCb6OrDd/s1385/ants.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1385" data-original-width="1113" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjygOctpKQqe1JDx-GPBT6wX-qNureANCG6focw9E0s1-BCfEw_cPqySitcCY6kGgWo0C0zhQ8Gg4ecvEyUwT3Zr48ozOoecdmPpgiV5pTW2d4zLejK7HThT0vpGT4dPOga-1UgWCb6OrDd/w161-h200/ants.jpg" width="161" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p><br /></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-37873608530943835402021-04-07T09:18:00.000-04:002021-04-07T09:18:12.937-04:00Smells<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p></blockquote><p><span><span>My mother has just rung the bell of my paternal grandparents' apartment in Barcelona when she spots a smudge of chocolate on my chin. She whips a handkerchief out of her purse, spits on it, and rubs frantically at the spot. As the peculiar smell of her saliva drying on my skin starts to fade, the door opens and my tiny black-clad grandmother, tottering in her high heels, ushers us into the apartment. She gives me a kiss, and I feel the soft, almost invisible down on her cheek, and smell her special smell: toasted almonds. </span></span><span>Why my city grandmother should smell of toasted almonds doesn't make sense to me, because it is my <i>country </i>grandmother, my mother's mother, who cracks and toasts the almonds from her trees and sends them to us by train in the fall, to eat along with the raisins that she dries in her attic.</span></p><p>Barcelona smells of diesel, with its citrusy undertones. The fish market smells of fish and wet floors. My parents' bedroom smells of the abominable camphor and menthol salve that my mother rubs on my chest when I suffer one of my endless colds, and of the lavender eau de cologne that she applies to my temples to relieve my frequent stomach upsets.</p><p><span>But I am never sick in the summer. We spend it on my maternal grandparents' farm, which provides an a three-month olfactory orgy. Guided by my nose, I sniff and snuffle my way from house, to yard, to stable, to fields. There is the hot, dry smell of the chicken coop, and the moister, lower notes of the pig house. There is the metallic smell of the dust on the roads when it begins to rain, and the rancid smell of the sheep as they are driven home from pasture in the late afternoon. </span></p><p><span>My mother and her sisters are forever passing judgment on smells--disgusting! (of the manure pile); delicious! (of the sun-warmed melons from my grandfather's garden). Unlike them, I am an impartial observer of odors, treating them simply as data points to help me navigate the world. The only smell I despise is the acrid stench of the Flit that my grandmother sprays in the dining room to kill flies before each meal.</span></p><p><span>I am strongly attuned to the individual smells of the grownups in my family. The American devotion to deodorant and daily showers has not yet penetrated European culture, and everybody past puberty possesses copious underarm hair. This gives each of my relatives a signature bouquet that is as much a part of their persona as the shape of their nose or the alignment of their teeth. I do not find it unpleasant.</span></p><p><span>My olfactory connoisseurship reaches new heights one day when I come across my aunt folding a stack of laundered undershirts belonging to my father, my grandfather, and my uncle. They are all white and sleeveless, identical but for a red initial sewn inside the neckline. Showing off, I tell my aunt that, if I close my eyes, I can tell which shirt belongs to whom by its smell. </span></p><p><span>"But the shirts just came off the clothesline," she says. "They don't have any smell." I assure her that they do. "Go ahead, then" she laughs, and hands me a shirt. I squeeze my eyes shut, sniff, and identify the shirt as belonging to my grandfather.</span></p><p><span>"That was just coincidence," she says. "Smell this one." I correctly attribute the second shirt to my uncle. The game goes on until we run out of undershirts. My aunt goes to find my mother. "Your daughter," she says, "is part hunting dog."</span></p><p><span>Other than the undershirt game that I play with my aunt, I keep my olfactory adventures to myself, and ask no questions, especially about </span><span>one smell that I find puzzling. When I raise my arms to embrace my mother around her waist, and press my face against her belly, I sometimes perceive an odor that reminds me of the smell of fresh sardines, and whose source will remain a mystery for the rest of my childhood.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9d4eQOsof3KZ5NGPiwYZ9KC2RTdMjnhXdJb2j2fZ5p0LYuc2ItKDvv2K8oDWELmKAhZ8HM9mkgfr9ftWU5BsdfsdASe9Ns__bR5aPaPUd-0RjGd1ok_cZNU7C4IPoYLM27pWSP7C_YyDz/s1020/smells.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="806" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9d4eQOsof3KZ5NGPiwYZ9KC2RTdMjnhXdJb2j2fZ5p0LYuc2ItKDvv2K8oDWELmKAhZ8HM9mkgfr9ftWU5BsdfsdASe9Ns__bR5aPaPUd-0RjGd1ok_cZNU7C4IPoYLM27pWSP7C_YyDz/w158-h200/smells.jpg" width="158" /></a></div><br /><span><br /></span><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-28814151572423470062021-03-31T08:55:00.001-04:002021-03-31T08:55:48.795-04:00Not Yet<p><span style="font-size: large;">It may be my Catholic upbringing--suffer first on this earth, then get your reward in heaven--but I believe that only those who have endured a northern winter can truly enjoy spring. It's not that I hate Vermont winters. I would never chosen to move here if I did, and I confess to looking a few millimeters down my nose at those who flee to warmer places at the first sign of snow. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Vermont winters are beautiful in so many ways--the muted shades of the landscape after the visual brouhaha of autumn, the frigid morning air that wakes up the very marrow of your bones, the roads empty of tourists. When the days grow short I retreat indoors, along with the wild creatures. Book in hand, the cat blinking on my lap, the dog dreaming by the (gas) fireplace, I am as contented as a chipmunk in her hole. But by mid-February all this <i>hygge </i>begins to pall. I have been stoic for months. I have not lapsed into bitterness or self-pity. I have sat before my light therapy box every morning, and poured extra vinegar into the washing machine to minimize static cling. Now I deserve--no, the universe <i>owes </i>me--spring.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I'm not asking for those clichés of the full-blown season, lilacs and daffodils. I'd be grateful just to be able to go outside with only a coat on, instead of coat, hat, scarf, gloves, mittens, heavy socks, and yaktracks strapped to my boots. I'd be thrilled to rediscover the humble pleasure of walking while looking at the trees and the sky, instead of looking at the ground, on the watch for black ice. And, after months of hearing only the cawing of crows (which I nevertheless appreciate as a sign of life in the otherwise dead landscape), it would cheer my soul to hear a little brown bird singing at the top of a tall, bare tree.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">What makes a northern spring so magical is not out there in the physical world, but rather inside us, in our human nature. As the troubadours, the Victorians, and the Church knew, we humans mostly hanker after what we can't have: the princess in the tower, the ankle beneath the petticoat, truffles during Lent. The grass-is-greener principle is ingrained in our neurons, alas: after prolonged exposure to a pleasurable stimulus the delight begins to fade, and we look around for something different.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Therefore, thank heaven for the four seasons, Nature's built-in mechanism to keep us happy and on our toes. Grateful as I am for every glimpse of green--and there aren't many around here at the moment--I know full well how tired I will be of the omnipresent greenery (not for nothing is this state named after <i>les verts monts</i>), the heat, and the humidity, and how I will crave the golds and reds and chill of autumn. And when the leaves are gone, and "stick season" is upon us, I will wait for the first snow, feel disappointed when it melts, and long for the time when the landscape is entirely covered in white. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And then when the days start to get longer, I will look outside in the morning, frowning and tapping my foot, muttering about the blasted weather and wondering when I can put away the humidifier that hums in our living room from October through March and has to be refilled, it seems, every five minutes (not yet). </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>Wondering when I can throw my parka in the washing machine and hang it in the closet until next fall (not yet).</span><span>Wondering when I can take the three geraniums that I have watered and misted and kept under a light out to the porch (not yet!). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This is so not-Zen, I know. Maybe it explains why Buddhism is popular in places without seasons, like India and California. Here, practically next door to the pole, Nature herself gives us permission to desire, at certain times of the year, what is still in the future. As soon as spring arrives for good, I'll gladly go back to being fully in the present. But not yet.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhp-M6zOm1k0PUpLuDKfaATfbjy9a6xCoJu4Azugq5rYETpmQuPMs9LKzfi-8U8TZtsN7aEIUJXLTMOMzCdtKXj97FiLw8qVCA8yF4XtxK-oJrac5rWNry77yGeF-dqXOWCXNQNUWvBEFm/s1626/not+yet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1626" data-original-width="1176" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhp-M6zOm1k0PUpLuDKfaATfbjy9a6xCoJu4Azugq5rYETpmQuPMs9LKzfi-8U8TZtsN7aEIUJXLTMOMzCdtKXj97FiLw8qVCA8yF4XtxK-oJrac5rWNry77yGeF-dqXOWCXNQNUWvBEFm/s320/not+yet.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2226876762714358061.post-88588056640810731692021-03-24T17:11:00.001-04:002021-03-24T17:11:53.458-04:00Little Phobias<p> T<span>he pandemic is abating, the world is slowly opening up, and for almost everyone this is great news. But for hermits, introverts, highly sensitive persons, and molluscoid types like me, the news is mixed. Yes, it's good to be able to buy a loaf of bread at the store without putting my life at risk. And it's good to know that I could, if I wanted to, have a professional cut the hair that, in the words of the musical, has grown "down to here, down to there, down to where it stops by itself."</span></p><p><span><span>But for those who identify at least in part with oysters, clams, and mussels, the quarantine brought definite advantages. As </span><span>everything became forbidden, a delicious freedom invaded our lives. </span><span>It was lovely to wake up day after day, month after month, without commitments to clutter our mental horizon. It was a relief to be spared the responsibility of making decisions about social obligations. Pascal said, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." </span><span>Now we had permission to do just that.</span></span></p><p><span>But not everything was rosy in my pandemic retreat. After a while, the shell inside which I huddled began to feel constricting. I was brought up to believe that intelligent people are never bored ("Think!" my father would advise whenever I complained that there was nothing to do). Nevertheless, there was a limit to the amount of entertainment available within the walls of my cranium. What Jung called "the circumambulation of the self" was starting to make me queasy. </span></p><p><span>Even more distressing, I noticed that, during the rare in-person conversations in which I engaged, I was losing the ability to respond quickly to what was coming out of other people's mouths. Words escaped me at hitherto unseen rates. I would get tangled in the thickets of a relative clause and be unable to find my way out again. </span></p><p><span><span>I </span><span>needed outside stimulation. I longed to feel the wayward breezes of other people's ideas. My mental gears groaned for the oil of human contact. Inside my clamshell, my legs were cramping; my chest was tightening; I was stifling. I had all the symptoms of claustrophobia.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Of course, my shell was not a prison cell. Within reason, I was allowed a certain amount of freedom. Well-masked and distanced, I could walk the icy roads with a friend. I could make brief excursions to the grocery store. I could even get in the car and head for the wide open spaces. But as the pandemic wore on, I became reluctant to do any of these things. Rather than fetch that loaf of bread, I would make do with the ancient tortilla discovered at the bottom of the </span></span><span>freezer. It was too much effort to make myself heard and understood from behind my double masks, so </span><span>I took fewer walks with friends. </span><span>And I avoided car trips except when compelled by an urgent need that Amazon could not fulfill.</span></p><p><span>Along with claustrophobia, I also had agoraphobia.</span></p><p><span>So now, as gates fly open and the peoples rejoice, all I feel is conflict. Caught between the desire to burst out of my clamshell, and fear of the outside world, I am an apprehensive, undecided, spineless mollusc.</span></p><p><span>I know what you're supposed to do about phobias: you desensitize yourself gradually. </span>If you're scared of spiders, you start by looking at pictures of them. Then you observe a live one at a distance. Gradually you get closer and closer, until you turn into one of those people who trap spiders under a glass and deposit them outdoors, murmuring endearments. Following that model, and now that the weather is easing, I should lengthen my walks, take longer drives, maybe actually go somewhere I want to go (but where?).</p><p><span>It will take time and effort to get rid of my fears, but it will be worth it, I tell myself--that is, unless the dreaded variants take off and I have to scuttle back into my clamshell. My emotional life is starting to resemble the game of whack-a-mole: claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and now, the mother of all phobias: the fear of uncertainty. But I'll probably just have to learn to live with that one.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8xRjD4vllbN3P8iG5r81a13ktlVHSS1TyT7mWmxMKmztT4gYSkQIFnpOOZxH22h9j_EMDIWwkBKUFf03DdviKI6yabr2ipXxLTypOoDNpw2JBb-I_hyphenhyphenKbJRN7SqLVrlnqQNB1h0jmpxK8/s1118/clam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="1118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8xRjD4vllbN3P8iG5r81a13ktlVHSS1TyT7mWmxMKmztT4gYSkQIFnpOOZxH22h9j_EMDIWwkBKUFf03DdviKI6yabr2ipXxLTypOoDNpw2JBb-I_hyphenhyphenKbJRN7SqLVrlnqQNB1h0jmpxK8/s320/clam.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Eulalia Benejam Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247079657985430691noreply@blogger.com10