I’ve seen a lot during my year; a lot of death, in particular. I don’t know the statistics to know what is “normal” for a nursing homes, but it seems that my nursing home has lost many residents in the year that I have been there. Being around so much death has taught me a lot, about myself and people in general. It seems to me that American society has removed itself death. Death belongs in hospitals, ambulances, nursings homes, away from the glaring light day and our busy lives. Those who deal with death are often accused of being calloused…could it be because, as a whole, we have forgotten how to deal with death?

I have learned that I want to be the one to perform the post-mortem care; I have learned I cannot cry while I am on the job. Even when it is a resident I was especially close to, the moment I know they are not with us anymore, a switch flicks in my head and I taking care of what needs to be done, I do the post-mortem, I say goodbye, I go back to the usual work, but I don’t cry. Not until I am all done for the day, not until I am on my way home, out of sight of the building and then the tears come. I’ve scared many a worker at a restuarant, sitting in the parking lot crying my heart out. (It’s kind of funny, in a not-so-funny way. ) There are some others of my coworkers who are similiar, but most, I found, will cry on duty. It’s not a caretaker thing, I’ve learned, it’s a person thing.

A recently hired aide has been seriously getting on my nerves these last few weeks. She’s a drama queen, always trying to show how she is the best by insisting that she cares more for the residents than anybody else. A couple weeks ago, she and I were working together and there was a resident who was dying. This aide kept going on and on about how upset she was, how much she loved this resident, how torn up she was going to be when the resident died. Then she’d look at me out of the corner of her eye like “what about you? How are you showing how much you care about this person?” I showed how much I cared by ignoring this aide as best I could and doing my job; because in my opinion, the best caretakers, the aides and nurses I really respect don’t have to go pointing out how much they care. That much is evident when you view the quality of their work. Being the best means giving your best; it’s not about you and your rising above your coworkers.

You don’t get used to death, but you do learn how to deal with it…or you don’t. Everybody has a different way, a different expression of grief and love; you can’t measure love by the number of tears, or spoken “I love you”s. For a caretaker, love is measured by the care you give, the way you do your job. Being a caretaker is a self-less role (or it should be), it requires that you put yourself, your ego and your pride to the side and show the person that you are taking care of that they come first.

Then I saw the images on the TV and thought that even pre-algebra would be better than this. Half a country away, safe in my own home, I still felt the pain as the Twin Towers crumbled. Ten years on, I can still remember that moment and that day.

The answer has a lot to do with the fact that of the eight college credit hours I am taking this semester, four are for Spanish 101.

It’s interesting learning a new language; the Latin I took in High School has really been helpfully. The biggest trouble I’m having is pronunciation. For some reason I can’t get my tongue around the idea that A says “aah”, E says “a” and I says “e”. My brain has it down pat, but when it comes time to say it, my tongue over-rides my brain. Again.

So that’s where the animated movies come in. I pop ‘em in, turn the Spanish audio on and listen. Live-action movies are out because I get distracted with how the lips and words don’t match up. . .and my brother has the mother-load of animated shows and movies.

So far I think it’s helping!

So this is it; I’m leaving New Mexico, the desert and a brief respite from reality and my busy life.

Denver to Louisville

We just left Denver around forty minutes ago. As  I’m looking out my window I can see miles upon miles of flat land; what was once prairie. Now it is commercial farmland, crisscrossed with straight lines and right angles: straight lines of roads, field borders, houses, yards. Sometimes the lines are interrupted by circles of irrigated. . .but even those have a rational pattern. Even the towns I can see are exactly the same, roughly square, occupying  the space where two lines meet.  I don’t particularly like this. There is too much of man’s domination, the straight lines writing “conquest” on the land. 

A river runs through the landscape, a river flowing in curves and bends, nature’s sole protest.

 I am sitting in the extreme back of the plane, the engine a constant roar in my ear. In a way it is nice; the loud noise providing solitude on a crowded plane. Behind me is the lavatory and my fellow passengers are annoying me with their tiny bladders. I shouldn’t complain, they can’t help it ( their bladders, that is; they could adjust their attitudes). I am in a seat all by myself, an aisle and window seat. Across the aisle is a man and his young son. They are visiting Southern Indiana from California, if I heard the father correctly. Both are very nice. I’m fairly certain the boy has some form of austism, though I haven’t come right out and asked.

Just slightly above us are clouds: gray, fretful and looking like a storm. We are in a thin, misty layer of clouds, turning the landscape below hazy and indistinct. Earlier, when we were taking off, I saw a rainbow, reflected not only in the sky but also on the earth: a full circle of colors and light. Somehow that image brought the rainbow story in the Bible and God’s covenant with us closer and more poignant. Through the clouds and the haze I can see the land rising into little, rolling hills cut through by more and more waterways. I AM headed home.

We are in the last 45 minutes of flight (according to the pilot) and I have put down Gifts by Ursula K. LeGuin to look out the window. Much as I love that book, I’m glad I did. The sun is setting, casting its last hour of light over the back of the plane. Down below, still shrouded in mist and cloud, the Ohio river gleams up at us. I had forgotten just how broad it is. The flight is getting bumpy, courtsey of a brewing storm, but I don’t mind. As I told Aunt Kendra this week: “Sometimes a little danger hightens the beauty of the moment.” There is a sense of displacement, being in the air. You know that you do not belong here, and so for a while, you stop looking. At least, that is how it occurs to me. I spend so much of my life looking, questioning, searching. . .for a while it is wonderful to lay it down and just enjoy the displacement. I think I could get used to this.

I raised my eyes from the page in time to see the clouds that surround me turn muted shades of orange and pink. Even the backs of the plane wings are awash with color as the sun’s last rays slant upwards, filling the world with a riot of colors before it finally sinks below the horizon. Not long now until we begin our landing.

Colored clouds make a river in the gray. Out my window I can see lights of towns. They speak to me of home, warmth, food,  bed and getting off my sore tailbone. The light from the setting sun is dimming quickly. Soon, very soon, it will be dark and I will be home.

Now, at last I can pick out familiar landmarks from the cityscape below. There, the bridges; there, the tall buildings. We are over Louisville and a cloud is welcoming me home with a lightning display. It lights up the now dark sky with occasional flashes of light, though none of the lightning ever leaves the cloud. Beautiful and dangerous. The decent is through thick gray clouds and disorienting darkness, lit by the lightning cloud.

And yet, ever now and then, something happens and enables you to take all the bad stuff, all the crap and frustration, and just shove in a closet and lock the door. Yesterday, one of those things happened to me.

We were in the dining-room, feeding the residents dinner. I had finished assisting the residents I was assigned to, so I was just kind of floating about, helping anybody who needed it. One time I looked up and noticed that a new resident’s daughter was watching me; I smiled at her and went back to what I was doing. Next time I looked up, she caught my eye and said: “You’re kind.”

Three  syllables. Three words. It still hit me like a ten-ton boulder. The rest of the day was a good day, mostly because of that. It”s amazing how little things like that can make all the difference in the world.

• Racism is a door that swings both ways. One side has, definately, better excuse to shove the door. . .but still. I hate being judged by the color of my skin first. I’m not just a vacationing white girl, in truth I don’t think of myself as a white girl. I’m Hannah. Generalizations suck.
• Curio shops and traditional markets are my native turf, and I am a lot more of an involved shopper than most of my family. . .as I discovered one day when I looked back and saw Aunt Kendra trailing me and looked forward to see venders fawning over me like I had some serious money to spend! (Which, I might add, I did not.)
• New Mexicans have an extra staple food: chilies. Particularly the green-melt-you-mouth-off chilies. Even the hummus had green chilies in it!
• Stupid tourists make me cranky. I mean, if you are going to be a tourist, be serious about it. You are a guest here, you are just visiting; somebody else lives here and has to put up with hundreds like you. A little respect goes a long way.
• Most people don’t expect sarcastic things to come out of my mouth. I don’t know why.
• Even though I have left EMS, I still am very anxious to know about the local EMS systems and who is going to come get me if I fall off this mountain and if they’ll get to me within the Golden Hour.
• A lot of people in Santa Fe are horrible drivers.
• Even though I’m not in Indiana, I still get stuck behind an Impala on every trip.
• Weather in Santa Fe is regular thing, at least it was while I was there. Clear in the mornings, then at noon the clouds start building up around the mountains, growing larger in the afternoons and then every evening there would be a light drizzle. Not like unpredictable Indiana weather!

In the cities, the unique landscape is still present, still in the background, but muted by the impact of human lives. . .but out in the desert, among the mountains and river valleys. . .it’s impossible to not to notice the strangness, the beauty. Do you ever get used to it?

Aunt Kendra told me of a local friend of hers who, every morning, would go outside and just look at the mountains. Even after a life-time of living in their shadow, she still was in awe of them. Can you ever get used to such blatent beauty?

I don’t think I could.

I have two types of liking something. There is a admiration, an appreciation of inherant qualities; I see something, I like it and I leave it. And then there is a liking that I call “belonging”. I see something, I like it, I feel apart of it (or it feels like a part of me). Beautiful as New Mexico is, I didn’t actually get the “belonging” feeling until I stood looking down at the river valley of the Rio Chama. Against the other-worldly mountains, in contrast to it, there was water and green. Green pastures, green trees. When I saw that I thought: “This is a place to be lived in.”

or a Samsung a777 Refurb

Thoughts?

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After that crazy flight, arrival at my destination was. . .normal. It was so great to see family I haven’t seen in a while. Not really having seen my aunt, uncle, NaNa and PaPa since I was a little girl, it was almost like I was meeting them for the first time. I have decided I like them all as adults.

As I am waiting at the terminal, I look about me at my fellow passengers. I have chosen my spot well for observation; my back to hall, a window to my left. There is one more row of seats behind me, empty, unclaimed, but I have no desire to sit in a corner.

In the same row as me, but on the other end there is a boy, about 14, wearing a black T-shirt with a large skull motif. He looks quite bored. Two rows ahead, their backs towards me, are the following: a young couple, a young woman and a man in army uniform. The couple look content with each other and the wait. The service man is also young, not yet 30, I’d guess. (What is it with young people and this flight?) Like me, he is sitting with the window to his left. The young woman is playing with her phone. In the farthest row is a father and his five-year-old daughter. He is busy on his computer; she is making sure everyone notices her pink-rimmed sunglasses. That’s all, but it is still an hour and half before the flight takes off.

Forty-five minutes later. . .

Great. Wonderful. Just perfect. Jan had it right on the money when she said that if something bad is going to happen, it is going to happen to me. My flight got delayed over an hour. Actually, according to the third and latest departure time, we are supposed to be in the air in thirty minutes and the plane is still not here.

Flight from Louisville to Denver

Another river cuts across the landscape below. I can barely see it through cloud, fog and smog. I am on level with the clouds now; I know that once this plane touches ground it will be all rush and reality but for now the dreamer in me is uppermost.

I am right over the wing. It blocks my view of the land below, but it reminds of the impossible reality of an airplane. I can still see the river. I don’t know why I’ve latched on to this river: I don’t even know what river it is!

The captain just announced that it will be another hour and twenty minutes. I hope I can make my Denver connection. Looks like we’ll be parting ways with the river. It’s twisting off to the right and we’re not.

Flight from Denver to Albuquerque

Leaving Denver I saw plains give way to city, city to mountains, and finally, mountains give way to desert before the whole was hidden from view by the ever-present, growing cloud mass.