Reflection of My Life

August 13, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Maria Rodale, whoever that is, wrote: Gardens are microcosms of our approach to living.

[I had to look her up since the only Rodale name I knew was Rodale Press that published books on health and gardening and other such topics, and it turns out she is one of those Rodales.]

If she’s right about gardens being microcosm of our approach to living, I wonder what my garden says about me, and if it truly is a reflection of my life. I tend to think it is. Since I am always balanced now (or rather, I try to be), not swinging too far from center emotionally, politically, or any other “ally,” it stands to reason that I would all unknowingly approach my garden the same way. My lawn is carefully tended and groomed, mowed and (sometimes) weeded though not, perhaps, as often as they should be. Some of my garden spots are also carefully tended, yet others are pretty much left to do what they want. For example, I planted petunias in my raised garden, and first they were overtaken by self-planted moss rose (portulaca) and then both the moss roses and petunias were overtaken by marigolds. I’m too soft-hearted to rip out those marigolds, and anyway, who am I to say what gets to live and die? (Though admittedly, I do try to roust a lot of the weeds that grow in my space.) And so, poor things, they are left to duke it out on their own.

It’s not a bad way to garden in a place that’s inhospitable to many plants because the things that grow well here tend to do very well, which is why I have so many purple magnus echinacea and red ice plant — they spread. On the other hand, the New England aster I was so proud of at the beginning, don’t do well at all anymore. They don’t like the heat, they don’t like the soil, and they especially don’t like the pH of this soil. (Like most soil in Colorado, it’s highly alkaline, a gift the primordial ocean left behind when it receded from the state.) Every year I cut those poor asters back since that’s supposed to help keep the plants from going brown; every year I think of maybe potting them or doing something else to make them thrive, and every year I just let them be.

My garden is also a reflection of my need to learn as well as my rebellious streak, where I don’t necessarily want to do what the experts suggest, so mainly I learn by trial and error. As I have always done. (Which is probably why I have an enormous and eclectic store of knowledge in my head while also being naïve about many things others seem to know instinctively.)

Most people, at a casual glance, would not be able to connect any of that garden approach with my mostly laissez faire attitude toward life (lately, that attitude is being drowned out by my sadness at the way communism is creeping into the country, but I still mostly try to go along to get along). For anyone who’s paying attention, my yard does say one thing: an old woman lives here. When Jeff and I would see a nicely kept up yard in any of the areas we lived, we always knew it was taken care of by a retiree because no one else seems to have the time or inclination.

And that, too, says something about me — unabashedly accepting my age.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

End of the Heat Wave

August 12, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Today is the last day of a heat wave, and I am celebrating by . . . well, by talking about it. That’s not much of a celebration, but then, the end of the heatwave isn’t much to celebrate because out here on the plains, we still have another month or two of scorching weather. And anyway, the end of this particular extreme weather week might bring the temperatures down by fifteen degrees, but it’s still hot — low 90s, though it might dip down into the high 80s. There’s also a chance of rain in a few days, but I’m not counting on it. The weather folks seem to do okay on forecasting temperatures in this area, but they are so often wrong about precipitation.

Still, it would be nice to get some rain — we certainly need it. And I need a day off from working outside. Of course, if we do get rain, that day off will be followed by a massive influx of weeds, but oh, well. It all evens out in the end, I guess.

Surprisingly for this time of year, my yard is still mostly green, though there is a weird patch of brown grass that I can only imagine came from some animal’s excretions — a skunk maybe. They’ve been active around here, at least according to the smell. Luckily, they are a nocturnal creature, so I don’t encounter them, which I would not like at all.

There are a few garden spots of flowers, which is nice. Oddly, a couple of the chrysanthemums are starting to bloom. I thought lower temperatures were their instigation, but apparently not. Maybe it’s the lessening of the light that makes them bloom. Or it could be that since they started growing earlier this year, it’s simply time. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing a bit more color in my yard. Right now, most of the color is in the front where I have two semi-circular flower beds filled with mini zinnias. I thought they’d be a sure winner for those areas since they love the sun, but apparently they don’t like as much heat as they’ve been getting because I’ve had a rough time keeping them going. But today, they are pretty, so there’s that.

Well, I’ve stalled long enough. It’s time for me to brave the heat and go out to water the zinnias and anything else that’s struggling.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, gardening, home, life. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Pat Van Winkle

August 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Even though we’re in the middle of a heat wave, the past few days I’ve gone outside in relative cool of the early morning to do some much-needed work — trimming overgrown plants, weeding, deadheading, and whatever else I happen to notice when I’m out there. It’s exhausting work, not just the activity but because “relative cool” in no way means “cool.” There is still a lot of weeding to do, but luckily, much of it is not in my view, so I can pretend the weeds aren’t there until I again get the inclination to work that hard.

Yesterday, after I finished working and recuperated a bit, I had to run errands and pick up a couple of food items. I stopped at the nearby dollar store, walked inside, and stopped cold. I stared around at all the Halloween items, totally confused. “What month is this?” I asked a nearby clerk. She laughed, knowing exactly what I meant, and replied, “It’s August.”

Whew! For a minute there, I thought something had happened when I’ve been all caught up in working, like perhaps a month or two passing without my realizing it. I joked and told her that the early seasonal products were not fair for us older folk living alone because we have a hard enough time keeping track of the days.

Although considerably younger, she admitted she’d felt the same way when they got the shipment of Halloween items, and even worse, they’d already received their Thanksgiving shipment.

I hope the moment of befuddlement, not knowing what month it was, isn’t a prognostication of my future. I certainly don’t like the feeling of utter befuddlement. It’s bad enough that the world is passing me by —

I had to stop there and think. Is the world passing me by, and if it is, is it a bad thing? And if it is a bad thing, do I care?

Actually, no. I don’t care, as long as I don’t get confused. For me, confusion is too disorienting, and leaves me . . . confused.

At least there’s no confusion in my mind now. It’s still August. We’re still in a heatwave, though it’s expected to cool down in a couple of days, and I’m still me, not any sort of out-of-time “Van Winkle.”

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

So What?

August 10, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I came across an article where someone had asked the millennials why they hate the boomers and then shared the responses. Quite frankly, the responses seemed to me to be reasons to hate the millennials. Not really, but not “not really,” either. Most of the answers seemed to revolve around how older people use their phones. For example, they hate that “boomers” call instead of text, stop by instead of text, email instead of text. To them, all those things seem rude, but the only reason they would be dealing with these “rude” boomers is if they were related, in which case it seems to me as if they are too self-absorbed and not at all interested in reacting with those older folk in a way the older folk might appreciate.

I understand that mores have changed, and the phone generations think that not texting first is rude, but if someone calls, and you know who they are, it’s just as easy to ignore a call as a text and then call back when you have time. So what’s the gripe?

They also don’t like how “boomers” text, such as writing out whole words rather than using the made-up text language. What possible difference can that make to anyone? One millennial didn’t like that his father signed every text with “love, dad,” but so what? Apparently, they see these things as older folks not caring enough about them to learn the younger people’s way of doing things, but that works both ways: they don’t care enough about the older people to be grateful they at least are communicating and showing that they still care.

And they don’t like that “boomers” don’t want to deal with new apps. And if the oldsters do have to deal, they ask for help, which apparently the bratty millennials don’t want to give, even though trying to learn a new app would seem to be a way of connecting with the younger generations.

There were some other bizarre things they hated, such as older people not being frantic about “climate change” and the way they shrug it off with “the climate always changes,” when, in fact, in this case, the older people are correct. By now, most people have figured out the whole green movement was a scam, that climate is simply changing as it always does, so anyone who is still berating “boomers” about the climate are themselves now part of an older generation that isn’t keeping up with the times.

Other things they hate are that older folks share things that are not true, which is such a joke. Younger generations do that even more, secure in their arrogance that they know what is true when, because of their indoctrination, they haven’t a clue what is true. They only know what they know. (As does everyone, actually.)

They also don’t like that older people prefer cash or a check rather than “tapping” a card, but what business is it of theirs?

And, like everyone, they don’t like advice or back-handed compliments, or questions about their sartorial and body-decorating choices.

But basically, what they don’t like are the way their parents and grandparents use their phones and computers. I imagine, if I had kids or grandkids, they’d hate that I blogged rather than communicated with whatever app it is that they use nowadays.

It’s this sort of thing I started hearing from the older millennial commentators I used to check on occasionally but don’t anymore because who needs that attitude?

I guess this just proves I’m old, but so what? At some point, everyone grows old, at least, those who are lucky enough to live that long.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, culture, dealing with old age, internet, life. Tags: , , , . 11 Comments »

Off Balance

August 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram

This town is supposedly built on a giant ball of clay that moves, which puts doors out of plumb, even shifts foundations at times, and then it rolls again and everything moves in the opposite direction. I don’t know the truth of the “ball,” though there is no doubt that the soil here is heavy clay that doesn’t hold moisture. It’s also true that doors close differently at times, though, as someone pointed out, that could be due to moisture or lack thereof. Still, when I have to pull my north/south facing doors in tight to get them to latch, I also have to pull my garage pedestrian door in the same direction. And when I have to push the doors hard to get them to latch, the same thing happens to the garage door.

Also, a couple of years ago, I had to fix part of my foundation. There was a huge crack four feet from the corner on the western side of the southwest corner, as well as a huge crack four feet from the corner on the southern side, and that whole corner section moved several inches toward the southwest. Clay ball? Maybe. Moisture or lack of moisture? Could be. I don’t truly don’t know. All I know is that it happened. (I was able to get the foundation fixed. Whew!)

There is also a piece of concrete in the foundation that I had put in place to cover the coal chute since the coal burning furnace is long gone (and I wouldn’t know where to get coal anyway). That concrete slab moves back and forth — sometimes there is a fist-sized gap; sometimes no gap at all. The reason I had to have that chute blocked off is that the concrete that had blocked it off many years ago moved away from the house and sunk into the ground, making it useless.

So, the unstable clay ball could be the cause of all that. Or not. Who knows.

What brings this up today is that recently, at least a half dozen friends and acquaintances in this area have fallen. Me, included. I tripped on the edging around my lawn and fell slowly onto the cushioning grass that left me unharmed but with a single bruise I didn’t even know I had until days later, and more importantly, I had no trouble getting up, ungainly though my rise might have been. Not everyone was as lucky — some of the injuries were rather severe with a couple of people ending up in the hospital and needing care afterward.

It just seems bizarre that so many of us older women who have not even been in contact with each other lately have all fallen around the same time, especially since a couple of us are not prone to falls. I joked that maybe the earth moved and unbalanced us all, and once we’re acclimated, we’ll all be fine. Or it could be that the clay ball moved and did the same thing. (What makes the local ball the lesser explanation is that one of the falls did not take place around here, but at least five did, so that non-local fall could simply be an outlier.)

I do know it’s not one of those situations where once you become aware of something, you see it everywhere, because we all find out when one of our ilk falls, and generally it’s a one off.

But this time? There were too many falls. It must have been that old clay ball, either the local one or the entire globe putting us all off balance.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Well, no — I’m not sticking to that story, much as I liked it. I have a hunch we’re all dealing with the summer blahs as well as a heat wave that could be messing with our equilibrium.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, house, life. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Human Motivations

August 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I read an article where the author mentioned two powerful human motivations: the need to belong and the need to reduce uncertainty. He was using these motivations to explain why so many young white liberals are voting for communist/socialistic candidates. Apparently, that party gives them the identity and the certainty they need without their ever having to look beyond the belonging to perhaps a different truth than what they “feel” is true. If that’s the case, I can understand the young falling for the fallacy of getting everything for free, but apparently, in a few of the primaries where the socialists have won, even older white liberals have voted for the so-called socialist.

This need to belong is also the reason (rather a reason) why the leftist media so gleefully touts the avalanche of new people joining that party (the membership stands at little over 100,000 which is not much of an avalanche, and yet their wins make it seem so). The reason this is so damaging is that people want to feel as if they are winners, so they jump where they think the winners are, especially if those winners promise free everything. It explains, too, why people don’t always vote for who they really want — they vote for who they think will win. I suppose that’s part of the need for certainty and belonging. If the person they vote for wins, it validates them. If the person loses, it leaves them feeling uncertain about themselves.

You’d think that after a certain age, people would have learned to live with both a feeling of not belonging and a sense of uncertainty, but apparently not. For me, that acceptance came during my years of grief after Jeff died. Since he was my home, and since we did everything together, being left alone catapulted me into free fall, not knowing who I was, where I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to be doing. I still don’t know any of those things, and despite my being settled in my own home, I still feel uncertain and alienated at times. Working in a garden helps with accepting that reality, where every day is a lesson in unbelonging (a garden belongs to itself; a gardener is merely a caretaker since so much is beyond human control) and a lesson in uncertainty (there is no guarantee that a seed will grow, that a plant will survive the weather conditions, that hordes of insects won’t come to feast).

I also see another powerful human motivation at play in the political arena — a need to be agreed with. If you belong to a group that validates you, you never have to deal with unbelonging, uncertainly, or being disagreed with. Although I have come to an accommodation with the first two motivations for human behavior, the third is something I still struggle with. Most of what I know has come from serious study, and it tends to irk me when people just wave that off because they “feel” differently, but it’s their prerogative to feel however they want based on their own experiences. I am learning (trying to learn) to simply let their disagreement pass me by, realizing that that what others think has nothing to do with me, but feeling it inside where it counts is something else.

Still, I wish that those understandable motivations aren’t leading so many people toward an economic policy that has never worked before and certainly can’t work today, because if it ever succeeds, then what they think will matter tremendously, no matter what I think.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, grief, home, life. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Chugging Along

August 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

If I suddenly disappear, don’t worry. I’m probably fine, just taking a break from blogging. What’s going on in the world is just so discouraging that I get tired of writing about what I am trying to think through. Actually, I’m tired of trying to think things through, too, tired of trying to find a way to make everything — anything — make sense. (Though how does one make sense of what in many cases is utterly senseless?) In fact, I was seriously considering this to be my last post for a while, but a friend left me a message “Do not give up!” And that made a big difference. So thank you.

Not that I really want to talk about “the issues,” it’s that they are on my mind. Normally, I can push those thoughts away with talk of my garden, but right now, there’s not even much to say about my yard, not many pictures to show. At this time of year, the weeds sprout ten times faster than I can pull them up. (I am prone at times to exaggeration for the sake of making a point, but the speed at which the weeds are sprouting is the literal truth. Spurge, the worst offender, sure is a scourge! It’s everywhere.) Also, the summer flowers are mostly gone and the fall blooms still weeks away. Well, except for the marigolds. This year, they are like weeds, having planted themselves in copious numbers, even crowding out plants I paid for. What I discovered is that whatever marigolds are supposed to do to keep bugs away, they don’t. In fact, there are more bugs in my self-planted marigold beds than there are in the rest of the yard.

Although I don’t really like marigolds, except for their ability to brighten dead spots in fall, the French marigold is different. The odor isn’t as strong, the petals aren’t as compact, and the color is brighter. As with the traditional marigolds, these also self-seeded. In fact, I have more of them this year than were planted last year. (I didn’t plant them specifically — they came in an assortment of orange wildflowers.)

I do have a single pumpkin growing. I used to see a lot of thumb-size babies, but they all disappeared. I don’t even know how that happened. Maybe the momma pumpkin absorbed them. It’s a good thing I only need one pumpkin! Even though the tomato plant is as big as a bush, it still hasn’t produced a single blossom, and though the cantaloupe is producing flowers, it’s not producing fruit.

Yep. A discouraging time all around. Though that’s nothing new. According to blogs I posted at this time in previous years, that discouragement seems to a sign of the times. I can’t even blame my malaise on the heat — we had a couple of days hinting of fall before the 100+ temperatures returned.

I’ll chalk up my discouragement to the midsummer blahs, and keep chugging along, even if I do give in to my inclination to stop blogging every day.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »

Satisfying the Unsatisfied

August 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram

A recent poll shows that the biggest demographic supporting socialism and communism in the United States are not the “workers” that those communist mayors and politicians are pretending to support but young, college-educated liberal women who have discovered that their expensive degree is totally worthless, and that they are not earning what they think they should be.

Something struck me when I read that: it seems as if the expensive liberal colleges give students an unrealistic idea of how the world works, not just because of their conditioning, but mostly because they were living an extremely wealthy lifestyle: able to do what they want, buy what they want, play around with the courses they want, and all with minimal supervision. And then after graduation reality hits. They don’t get to keep up that lifestyle. Not only is the bill coming due for the loan, but a degree doesn’t get them anything more than an entry level position with an entry level salary with a boss who gets to tell them what to do.

That’s the way it’s always worked — you start out at the bottom and work your way up (unless, of course, you have an inside track). You also have to work, to show up, to put in the hours.

That expensive education also left them with an unrealistic view of the toll communism and socialism has always taken. Some of the members of the so-called democratic socialists have pledged themselves to China. Doesn’t anyone learn history anymore? Multiple millions died in China from starvation because of stupid decrees and because of executions during the cultural revolution and before. And currently there are all sorts of human right abuses. And this is what they support? And want to import? As if we don’t have enough problems.

Another weird thing about this push toward communism is the resurgence of that old “seize the means of production” fallacy. First of all, people who spouted that nonsense have generally been wealthy (you can see that even in the people being elected today — rich folk who never held a job trying to run a major city). So they take over production — then what? How are they going to run businesses when they can’t even run a city?

What might have worked a hundred and fifty years ago, when the population was much smaller, could never work today. (World population in 1900 was 1.6 billion, today it’s 8.3 billion.) Local industry was common back then, so the business might have been easier to take over, but today? How would that even be possible, considering how little of anything is made in the United States? And the companies that are here creating jobs, are often owned by other countries. They would simply pull out. And then there’s the stock market. That’s not local. People all over the world own stocks in major global corporations. They’re not about to let some penny-ante mayor take over their investment. And what about all the retirement funds invested in these companies? Suddenly, they’d all go broke, and then what happens?

I suppose this whole “wealth tax” that’s being touted here in the USA (while it’s being quietly rolled back in every country that has already tried it) could be their idea of seizing the means of production, but still, people in the United States today are not stuck in a tiny village where they have no say. Even if their voice is silenced or their vote ignored, they can move. No one is going to stick around and let what they have worked a lifetime for be taken away by the overeducated who feel underpaid.

Let’s pretend for a minute that they can seize the means of production — who’s going to run everything? The politicians who can’t run what they’re supposed to be running now? Those overeducated twits who feel so put upon? The CEOs and company managers who are currently in charge? No one would accept that kind of pressure if they’re not getting paid any more than the lowest worker, so they’d simply stop doing any work. The workers would, too, because why should they do any more than anyone else — so what you end up with is a competition to the bottom, not to the top.

And so, the world collapses. And why? Because some people think they deserve more than they got, and so other people need to give up what they have simply to satisfy the unsatisfied. The problem is, unsatisfied folk are never satisfied, and so they demand more.

How would that end? I have no idea. I just hope I never have to find out.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in culture, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Biased Behavior

August 5, 2026 — Pat Bertram

What happened to justice being blind? What happened to impartiality? When did bias become the main criteria in judging cases or reporting news? And isn’t “activist judge” an oxymoron?

Biased behavior, and the acceptance of it, seems blatantly . . . well, biased. There was a time when news people strived for at least the appearance of impartiality, when judges supposedly heard cases based solely on the law and the facts, not wealth, race, power, their own political aspiration, or any other prejudice a judge might have. Nowadays, it seems, things have been turned upside down. For example, a judge released a repeat offender who was here illegally because she claimed she couldn’t know his motivation. Who cares? A courtroom is not a whydunit. The guy assaulted people and had been arrested multiple times. That was proven. End of story. But the judge let him go, anyway, and he assaulted another woman. Other judges have let people go, even conspired in their release, simply because they were here illegally. Apparently, too many judges feel bad for people here illegally, and so they forgive even the most unforgivable crimes. For every criminal who’s on the deportation list, it seems there’s a judge who wants to keep him here.

But what about the victims? Shouldn’t the victims count, too?

Apparently not.

Yep. Justice.

And then there are the all the judges supposedly arguing on the constitutionality of various edicts, but instead, “activist judges” use their rulings to promote their own agendas. Appointed judges have way too much power, even over those who have been elected to positions of power.

You don’t hear a lot about obstructionist District Attorneys or how they wield their immense power, but too many refuse to prosecute minor and not-so minor cases. It used to be that shoplifting was a punishable crime, but then the cap was raised to $1,000 — anything less wasn’t worth the court’s time. And now the cap is nonexistent. People are allowed to loot stores without any consequences except that the store goes out of business. (And suits are brought against the store owner for daring to leave the area.) This disinclination to charge criminals extends way beyond shoplifting and into major cases such as assault, which is why so many people with huge numbers of arrests are never brought to trial let alone convicted.

When the offender is seen as the victim, when legal citizens have less rights than those here illegally, when “justice” is really injustice, when a judge’s ruling is obstruction for the sake of obstruction, when “news” so biased that it becomes propaganda, where do we go from here?

I don’t normally feel old. I’m just . . . whatever I am. But writing this, wondering all this, makes me realize that perhaps my time has passed. Growing numbers of people seem satisfied with overthrowing the truth, the law — and not incidentally, the constitution — and letting chaos rule.

Is that really the world they want to live in? Or are they so biased that they’ve become blinded to the truth?

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in culture, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

An Interesting Quote

August 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite quote?
View all responses

This isn’t my favorite quote since I don’t actually have one, but it’s something I read recently that hit a chord.

In the 1960s, psychologist Frank X. Barron set out to discover what made someone a creative thinker. He discovered that creative people seemed to have certain traits in common: independence; unconventionality; a vast inner life; a preference for complexity and ambiguity; a tolerance for disorder; the ability to extract order from chaos; and a willingness to take risks. He concluded:

“Thus the creative genius may be at once naive and knowledgeable, being at home equally to primitive symbolism and to rigorous logic. He is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner, than the average person.”

What hit a chord with that quote is that I have many of those attributes while at the same time, I consider myself a rather average person, and certainly no creative genius or any kind of genius, for that matter. (In fact, a teacher once said to me: “I bet you think you have a high IQ, but you don’t. It’s average.” But she did admit I was creative, so there’s that.) I’m pretty much middle of the road in just about everything, and that’s because I can often see both ends to any spectrum, can often even feel both ends.

I consider myself to be logical, but then, there is that other part of me that is more mystical than logical. Both tend to keep me centered in the middle.

I’m not sure about primitive and cultured. I don’t consider myself either, so perhaps that’s another middle of the road thing?

And I am knowledgeable about many things, but unfortunately, I am also aware of huge blanks in my knowledge base where I know there are things to know but don’t know them.

Then there’s the “destructive” part of the quote — though I am constructive when it comes to gardening, for example, pampering my plants for the most part, I can also be extraordinarily destructive. Yesterday, I needed to prune an overgrown bush, but by the time I finished pruning it, there wasn’t much left but the bare trunks and branches that had been hidden in the middle of the foliage, so I destroyed the whole thing. Well, not completely, just chopped it way back so that it would be years before it grew unwieldy again. It certainly helped me get rid of my frustrations with all that’s going on in the world today.

I do think I’m sane, though during most of my younger years, I thought I was crazy. I can’t remember why, now — maybe because I was so different from people I knew, maybe because certain noises made me frantic, or maybe because my mental processes took me places I wasn’t comfortable with. I remember once being terrified of meeting a psychologist who was new to the family because I didn’t want her to be able to see my craziness. Luckily, I never met her, and now it wouldn’t be an issue. Age does wonders for an uncertain mind!

I’m just as glad not to be a creative genius, because being simply me is hard enough.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »
« Older posts