It's Me: Jennie Block Taylor

Introspection is the way of the day (and the days to come) as we practice social distancing. I am fortunate in that I am an avid introspection practitioner; first as a retiree, and then more intensely as a widowed retiree. Solitude is the introspection work place. I spend a lot of time relishing how very fortunate I am. I have a wonderful family, amazing friends, a comfortable home and more stuff than I care to admit to that provides material to ward off boredom… and worry.

Still, I am worried about the possible health impact of the coronavirus on friends and family, the economic impact of measures being taken to contain the virus and the impact of fear and greed that seem to always accompany uncertainty. It’s easy to avoid the source of the worry by avoiding news broadcasts and the newspaper, but for me that’s cowardly. In the last week I have vacillated between cowardly information avoidance, and non-cowardly information overload. I would love to fall back on the old adage, “keep calm and carry on,” but the carry-on aspect has been removed from available options as schools and businesses close in the interest of public health. The emphasis now must be on keep calm. I have a familial tremor, so even when I try to keep calm, it appears that I’m a nervous wreck, which does nothing to encourage calm in those around me. Social distancing is working in my favor when it comes to encouraging calm in my loved ones.

Other things, non-viral in nature, are impacting the ability of individuals to keep calm. This is not nice to us, as keeping calm while keeping the coronavirus contained is a Herculean activity. There was an earthquake in Salt Lake City last Wednesday (happily pals Shari, Steve and Sochi are okay). The tectonic plates were moving and shaking, carrying on with no respect for the attempt to keep calm already underway by Salt Lake City area residents.

Further aggravating things, nature, and the part of nature that is viral, have no appreciation for the current societal dependence on immediate gratification. The stock market [over]correction that has occurred in response to the coronavirus has made it tough on retirees, prospective retirees, stock brokers, companies and pretty much everybody to procure with any immediacy. Immediate gratification is more difficult when restaurants and breweries are closed. Wiping one’s bottom (a completely legitimate immediate gratification need) is more difficult when there’s, inexplicably, no toilet paper available.

The threat, tragically, goes beyond immediate gratification when people lose their source of income and are unable to pay their rent/mortgage, utilities and purchase groceries (the groceries that are available to be purchased). I am comforted by stories, when I allow myself to watch the news, of people and organizations that are stepping in to support individuals who are negatively impacted by virus-containment-related activity.

So for now, I will be inspired by those who have chosen to “keep calm” and CARE on. Our economy is as shaky as the ground was in Salt Lake City last Wednesday. In both situations the impact varies from person to person and place to place. I’ve heard many a hero say, “I’m no hero.” I wish that were the case for me. I am NO hero; I never have been. I will still look for ways to help. They will be teeny-tiny non-heroic ways. I’ll let someone else have the last package of toilet paper on the shelf, and hopefully I’ll help in other ways too. I believe that what is going to have the greatest impact now is the combined efforts of the many and of the multitude of unseen, unacknowledged acts of caring.

Many are seeing red as panic grows in response to the Coronavirus. I rarely go to large events. I’ve never traveled overseas. I spend most of my time at home so I am much more likely to be impacted by the human response to the threat of the virus than to the virus itself. Like my Jessica did when she was a child, I’m going to choose to see things differently (I realize that I am fortunate to have that option and wish the best for those who don’t).

And so, my story, like so many before, will begin… Many, many pre-retirement years ago in a far-off place called Cedar Crest there was a small church where kind-hearted elderly women would gather to pray and share pot-luck meals. Jennie was the secretary for this small church and would take he daughter, Jessica, to work with her when Jessica did not have school. Jessica would happily interact with the elderly ladies and the pets that sometimes accompanied them. The elderly ladies would share their food with Jessica and all were happy.

On this particular day, the ladies were all dressed in green and their pot-of-luck consisted of dishes like corned beef and cabbage, and Irish soda bread. As always, the food was offered to Jessica. This was not the food that Jessica was used to sharing. The food, especially the cabbage, did not smell like the food Jessica was used to sharing. Where were the biscuits, the fried chicken and the mashed potatoes? Not only that, why had all the women chosen to wear the same color: green?

Jessica took these questions to her mother, who grumpily (while not a wicked step-mother, she could still be a wickedly grumpy mother) answered, “It’s St. Patrick’s Day. He’s a saint from the Emerald, which is green, Isle of Ireland, so on his day everyone wears green and eats Irish food.” Jessica’s mother went back to her typing, and Jessica was oddly quiet. Jessica was not typically a quiet child. A few minutes passed and Jessica interrupted her mother’s typing to ask another question: “When will it be St. Jessica’s Day and everyone will have to wear pink?”

That is not the end of the story, because we’re still awaiting the proclamation of St. Jessica’s Day. It will be a happy day, with all dressed in pink, eating food that does not stink and mothers will be forbidden to be grumpy. I can barely wait.

In the meantime, I will avoid grocery stores, where currently, not only mothers, but pretty much everyone is grumpy and behaving badly. Instead, I will prepare to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but instead of corned beef and cabbage, we’ll eat Irish stew (it has cabbage in it so it’s still a little stinky) and beer bread. We will wear good strong shades of green (no wimpy pale greens allowed) and eat sugar cookies with green icing that are shaped like shamrocks. While it won’t be St. Jessica’s Day, we will make the best of it and will definitely forbid the mention of Coronavirus. We will, however, wash our hands for 20 seconds just to be on the safe side. Life will be as good as we make it.

Uh oh, now Cinnamon wants a Saint Cinnamon Day when everyone will have to dress in fake fur, chase toy catnip-filled mice and eat cat food.

That was the theme of my pre-retirement life. Pre-school Jennie: “I can barely wait to start school.” School-age Jennie: “I can barely wait to be out of school and earning money.” Work-age Jennie: “I can barely wait to retire.”

Here I am now, a theme-less retiree. What comes after retirement? “I can barely wait to die.” I’m not there yet. I have no fear of death. I have some concerns as to what precipitates my death, but I know that death is inevitable so it would be a waste of my hard-earned retirement time to fear it.

There are specific events that continue to merit “I can barely wait” like seeing friends, going on a trip, receiving retirement pay; but, they don’t merit theme status. They’re too fleeting.

It may be that the real theme of my pre-retirement life was anticipation of what the future promised. I missed seeing a whole lot of the “here and now” because I was focusing on the “what’s to come.”

Retirement provides the opportunity for a more Zen-like existence; more “extant,” less “existential.” I can enjoy how good the sunshine feels on my neck NOW. Oh baby, it really feels good! It beats the heck out of, “I can barely wait to get those injections in my neck that lead me through a gateway of increased pain, and may or may not allow me to arrive at less pain than before the journey began.” Om… I don’t know if Zen practitioners say “Om” but I do know that the sunshine on my neck feels wonderful!

The injections were a bust. They “aborted” the procedure when my blood pressure decided to bid them farewell. That was after they took my “co-pay.” They get their money up front. That was yesterday. Sunshine is free and today it is shining on my sore neck. Life is good!

I grew up in a home where stoically enduring pain was considered to be a sign of personal strength and good character. Every once in a while, a good “whipping” would be administered to give each of us the opportunity to strengthen our stoic-pain-endurance skills. While working, I was provided with many situations that allowed me to continue honing those skills. The instances more often involved emotional and mental pain, than physical pain (although there were plenty of paper cuts, head bumps and occasionally a finger impaled with a staple – no crying or cussing allowed).

Retirement (or perhaps it’s just old age) has continued to provide lots of pain, ensuring my character and the opportunities needed for continued improvement (continuous improvement was a popular theme in the work world of my past). Recently, I have come to view pain as “proof of life.” When I feel pain, I know I’m alive. Aging has provided an increasing number of painful opportunities to feel alive. In fact, I have never felt more alive. My knees, back, neck, wrists, and sometimes my big toe remind me that I am alive.

Medical professionals do their part by convincing me to endure painful procedures to decrease my pain. Next Monday, I will have painful injections in my neck in the hope of decreasing my neck pain. The good news is that I will pay a lot of money (it will be financially painful) to be hurt, but hopefully not harmed, and to FEEL alive. It reminds me of the whippings of ol’ which were not only intended to encourage decency and good character, but to toughen us up so that we would survive the hazards of adolescent and adult life. We’re all still alive, so it must have worked.

I enjoy the Hendrik Groen books which, in diary format, chronicle the life of a geriatric man in an assisted living facility in the Netherlands. There’s a lot of humor in those books. I was surprised! He and his friends organize the “Old But Not Dead Club.” The club encourages participation in fun activities DESPITE the members’ ever-increasing aches, pains and incontinence. Those Dutch really know how to have fun, even when it hurts. It makes them feel alive.

In retirement, I enjoy crocheting, gardening and walking. Doing these activities, for me, is painful and fun. I should take up the guitar – I bet that would hurt. Life, albeit painful, is good.

My work history included almost every position known to man that included the word “assistant” in the job title: office assistant, program assistant, assistant clerk treasurer, medical assistant, educational assistant, library assistant, legal assistant. Those are the ones that come to mind. The mystery with some of those was, who was I assisting? Typically, I was solely responsible for the success of the program I was employed to assist.

As the library assistant in a small-town middle school I assisted students, faculty, administration and janitorial staff. It could be messy work, but it was wonderfully rewarding (just not financially). The children attending the school ranged in age from 12 – 15. Parents of those children ranged from poor to affluent and law-abiding to fugitives from justice. Our family lived in the district and fell in the lower portion of the standard-of-living scale.

The district was rural and encompassed a large geographical area with limited law enforcement presence. Many families’ only source of income was less than legal, or flat-out criminal, which resulted in one of my self-proclaimed library rules: If your library book was destroyed when your parents’ meth lab exploded, you were not required to reimburse the library (I would cover the cost). Parents of library patrons ranged from the most fundamentalist of Christians (“You should not have books like The Giver in your collection”) to parents who would show-up in t-shirts displaying the image of pigs humping with the caption “Makin’ bacon.”

Children’s character had little to do with their parent’s income level; there were well-behaved, and badly-behaved children from all levels. I suspected that this was the result of what was regarded as acceptable and unacceptable in individual homes. For instance, it might be unacceptable to take the Lord’s name in vain, but perfectly acceptable to bully and disparage anyone who didn’t share your beliefs. It might be acceptable to beat-up and bully your peers, because you were beat and bullied at home.

For me, a source of great joy, was when an adolescent would allow their child to shine through the oily self-conscious veneer of adolescence. It frequently emerged as a moment of hippity-skippity movement followed by extreme embarrassment. Their inner child would erupt like a soon to-be inflamed blemish on their face. For just one moment, the child within rose to the surface and emerged to be seen. It was a happy moment, for the adolescent, and for me watching. I worried that if the young people held that part of themselves submerged below the surface for too long the joy that was a child would drown and die. I was surprised that this was as likely to happen in the presence of strict fundamentalism as it was in an atmosphere of lawlessness and drug abuse.

I held that position in the last half of the nineties. The children I worked with are now in their mid to late thirties. I hope they still find opportunities to let their child shine through. I have held many positions since then (some, but not all, with the word “assistant” in the title) and am now retired. It’s time to let my child shine through (probably it will be best to do so when no one is looking). I’m going to embrace spontaneity and have fun when the opportunity arises (like going to a painting class when friend Ronnie calls just one hour before the class is to start to offer me her spot). I’m going to sing loudly to the radio when no one else is in the car (I will retain more friends if I limit this activity to times when I’m alone). I’m going to skip. It’s a great calf exercise.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I was all ready to spend the day feeling sorry for myself; this being the first Valentine’s Day since my spouse of 42 years, Phil, passed away, but I can’t do it. I have way too many friends to ever feel sorry for myself. I’m not sure how this happened. As I’ve mentioned before, I was a shy, awkward, self-conscious child which did not make me a friend magnet, but beginning in high school, I began collecting priceless friends, who remain my friends to this (Valentine’s) Day.

Beginning with my best (she is not only my best friend, she is the gold-standard best of the best) friend Shari, to my newest friends who accompanied me to the Escape Room yesterday, my friends are my most valuable treasure. So on this holiday that celebrates love, I do not feel left out; I feel immersed.

Love is my very favorite thing. I love my children and grandchildren. I love my friends. I love my cat. I love my neighbors. I love nature and the out-of-doors. I love learning. I love British television. I love my 2001 Toyota Camry. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Love is one of those great things, that the more you give, the more you get.

When I was working, I was asked to put together a presentation on empathy. We were experiencing some workplace discontent (hard to believe) and as a “transformational coach” I was called upon to try to help (that they would call on me for help, lends credence to how desperate the situation was). Thinking back, I may have offered to help. Anyway, in the spirit of “let’s all just get along” I got to work on a presentation. I decided that “putting yourself in another’s shoes” was very similar to “treating other people the way you want to be treated” so this theme was heavily relied upon in the presentation. The organization I worked with was continually stressing their reliance on numbers and data so I ended my presentation with ∞ > 1. My mathematical conclusion was that if each of us only cares for ourself, we each will have only one person caring for us. If we each care for every other person we come into contact with, we’re creating a current of caring enabling the possibility of an infinite number of persons caring for each other. My theory was that this was good because ∞ > 1. At the end of the presentation, many individuals in the room had blank expressions on their faces, so I passed around cookies and everyone was happy.

Cookies brings me back to Valentine’s Day (I always give my children’s families plates of homemade cookies for Valentine’s Day). I not only get by, I thrive, with the love of my family, cat, and friends: Shari and sisters, Terry, Jeri, Andrea, JJ, Liz, Mela, Ronnie, Eileen, Carolyn, Paula, Linda, and so many more (some I haven’t even met yet). Thank you and Happy Valentine’s Day!

My grandson, Nathan, told me that their cat, May-May, is able to coax cat treats from him by using her “cat-cuteness powers.” My cat, Cinnamon, has superior people-training powers. She has trained me to throw her mousy toys at specific times everyday, and for a duration she determines. She, too, invokes her “cat-cuteness powers” in her human behavior manipulation practices. Super-powers seem to be much more available to animals than to humans.

While working, I wished I had super powers. I wished I could cast a magic net of reason that would allow tasks to be completed with the cooperation of all required participants. Alas, it was never to be. I wished that while in meetings, I could gaze upon specific individuals with silencing-sight stares allowing others input that would prepare the waters of discussion for the casting of my magic net of reason. Sadly, my magic net of reason rotted in a shed in the recesses of the forest of my imagination. Meetings dragged on with unintelligible, irrelevant babble obliterating any chance of the implementation of meaningful action. So I retired.

In retirement, I have continued to wish for super powers. While my husband was ill, I wished for the power to grant sight and insight to the seemingly blind medical professionals who cared for him. I realized that their sight had been lost to the pressures of too many patients, and too much bureaucracy . The pressure effectively extruded their problem-solving, diagnosing and deductive capabilities leaving only time for reliance on prescriptive care guidelines that failed to allow for the rare and unusual. So he died.

Since his death, I have traveled the widow’s path, that can be scary, and has, again, left me craving super powers. I wish for laser vision to obliterate con men and unethical repair people from the planet. Okay, this one might be too violent for someone who considers herself a pacifist. Let me re-evaluate my super-power desire. Hmmm, maybe I will wish for the power to immerse individuals in a pool of empathy. I would be able to hold down really bad people just a little longer (not water-boarding duration, but close) than those who are not as evilly exploitative. Since lack of empathy is a characteristic of psychopaths, I could use my empathy-pool-immersion power to improve the complexion of society and decrease the number of serial killings. I live in a desert where pools of water are few and far between, so I’m going to revise my wish and wish for empathy-laser vision. I would gaze upon evil politicians with my empathy-laser vision recasting them as true representatives of their constituents. I would gaze upon the repairman sent to my home to repair my garage door opener who would then provide me with a fair estimate. It would result in an improvement to the current state of affairs, both nationally and personally. I don’t think I could use it on telemarketers, because the laser vision might destroy my phone, and those things are expensive. Shoot, I’m not sure I could use it on politicians either, because my current exposure to politicians is via the television. While televisions are much less expensive than cellphones, it could get very messy and labor intensive having to clean up laser-vision-obliterated televisions. As of today, my televisions are safe because I’m super-powerless.

The days of my teen-age-girl-cuteness powers, that allowed me to talk my way out of traffic tickets are long past. I’m happy that cat-cuteness powers are not age-related and subject to age-discrimination like people-cuteness super powers. I’m happy for cats. Cats’ lives are good. I should stop feeling sorry for myself and realize that my life is good too. The current political climate remains in need of super-power repair (as does my garage door opener).

It was a dark and stormy night… Oh yeah, that intro has been used before. Last week, on a cold and drizzly day, I was thinking how great it was to be retired, and able to sit in my cozy home, crocheting, while binge watching “The Crown.” I was content. At least I thought I was. Always ready to shift into self-doubt mode, I immediately questioned my contentment, and wondered if I was actually complacent. I continued to wonder, wondering how similar, and/or, dissimilar were contentment and complacency. I was a real Wonder Woman.

I decided at that moment to examine the difference(s) between contentment and complacency in this week’s blog post. Despite my feelings of self-doubt, I felt insightful and discerning. I felt that I had realized a subtlety that undermined contentment and all of its positive connotations by recognizing the similarities to complacency and all of its negative connotations. Today, in preparation for writing, I thought I would Google “content” and “complacent” and what should pop-up, but “content vs. complacent.” I proceeded with the search, and found that MANY had recognized and examined the similarities and dissimilarities before I had (some even before I was born).

It’s difficult to be innovative and inspired when it’s all been said before. Maybe I should get up earlier. Perhaps I should be content with my complacency (as long as the weather is bad and there are more episodes of “The Crown”).

I finished the afghan I was crocheting while watching “The Crown” and avoiding the inclement weather that dominated the out-of-doors. I’m pretty satisfied with it. So, if to be content is to be happy or satisfied, I’m content. This is good. Since I am the one who is satisfied with it, I guess I am self-satisfied, and therefore, complacent. This is not good. I am safe in my cozy home with a newly-crocheted afghan to keep me warm, so I must be contentedly complacent. Wait a minute; if I am filled with self-doubt, can I be self-satisfied? If I am not self-satisfied, that just leaves satisfied, which means I am content. Whew, that was a close one. Life is good!

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