Pat Bertram

Using Dance

December 4, 2014 — Pat Bertram

When I told an acquaintance I was taking classical dance lessons — ballet, jazz, tap — she gave me a blank-eyed stare and said, “How do you use it?” From her point of view, the question apparently seemed logical. She had once taken ballroom dancing, and she could use her skill if/when she went to a ballroom or nightclub or wherever such dancing takes place. I have no corresponding “use” for classical dancing, though I have been invited to participate in a few performances so I have used some of the dances I know.

Still, in the year and a third that I’ve been going to class, I never once considered whether there was a use for dancing. If anything, it’s more that dance has a use for me. It takes me beyond myself and at the same time, takes me into myself, making me more comfortable with who I am than I’ve ever been in my entire life. (I think it has something to do with living in front of a mirror for all those hours each week.) It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that demands all of me — mind, body, spirit, strength, dedication, loyalty. (I listed “mind” first without even thinking about it, and I was going to change the order to put body first, but this is the right order. Without the mind — learning, memory, imagining — there is no dance.)

Dance is a generous taskmaster and gives back more than it demands. Although I am nowhere near as graceful, balanced, and strong as I would like to be, I have come a long way since I began taking lessons. I can feel muscles now where there used to be . . . whatever there used to be. And I am a bit more balanced and graceful than I was before. Best of all, these benefits will remain with me even when I can no longer take dance classes.

There’s no need to “use” dance. Dance is its own reason for being.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: ballet, classical dance lessons, jazz, tap, using dance. 6 Comments »

You Matter

December 3, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I received this letter yesterday:

Dear Pat,

Give more than presents this holiday season, share the gift of caring with those who matter to you most!

With the holidays around the corner, the USC School of Social Work believes that there is no better time to encourage random acts of kindness. The simple act of telling someone why they matter could have a bigger impact than you know. For that reason, you’re invited to participate in You Matter, a grassroots campaign designed to foster well-being and bring back some much-needed human connection. We are on a mission to spread as much positivity as possible, and we hope that you’ll join us!

There are four easy steps to participate in #YouMatter:

1) Download a Care Card from the MSW@USC blog.

2) Write a message with someone in mind.

3) Snap a picture of your card and share on social media using the hashtag #youmatter and tag us @youmatterbc to inspire others.

4) Give the Care Card to someone and make that person’s day!

There’s never a better time than now to show others that that they matter in this world. If you love this campaign as much as we do, we ask that you please pay it forward by featuring #YouMatter on your blog.

Wishing you a wonderful and safe holiday season,

Gaby Acosta

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Sounds like an interesting campaign, even if she did neglect to tell me I matter!

If you’re interested in participating in this project, here is a “you matter” template to use. (Just right click and “save image as…) I was going to fill in the template, but in the end decided there was no “because.” You matter. It’s as simple as that.

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Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: #youmatter, care card, USC School of Social Work, you matter campaign. 5 Comments »

Stressed to My Limits

December 2, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m sitting here, wondering if I should write this post. I don’t want to make anyone feel bad, so I’m hoping the women involved don’t read this or if they do that they don’t fret, and yet, ever since my life mate/soul mate died, I’ve tried to write my truth.

I had lunch today with some friends after dance class. (Got to replenish those expended calories!) I was the only single woman at the table. All the rest were divorced and remarried. Not that their marital state is a problem for me anymore. I’ve gotten used to being the only uncoupled person in most situations. Nor did I think anything of their topic of conversation at first. I’ve heard it before — they all contend that losing a husband to divorce is worse than losing him to death because with divorce, he’s still around, especially if there are offspring involved.

But today I am feeling fragile. It’s only been a month since my father’s death, and although I am not grieving him the way I grieved for Jeff, my life mate/soul mate, my father’s demise has upset my equilibrium. I am aware of his empty place at the couch, his books, reading glasses, and magnifier stacked neatly the way he left them. I know he led a long and happy life, but his absence still is ever present.

Even worse, this is the second time in less than five years that my living situation has been thrown into upheaval by death, and this time I do not have a fall back position. The whole world lies open before me, but I don’t know what to do with it. To add to the complications, I need to pack in anticipation of leaving this house, which will be put on the market in a few weeks. I’d already gotten rid of the bulk of Jeff’s things before I came here, but what remains are “our things” along with what is left of his effects — things so emotionally laden that I simply could not dispose of them during that worst day of my life when I cleaned out his closet and drawers and prized possessions. And now I have to figure out what to do with it all. Oddly, the only thing so far that set off an emotional storm was the container of refrigerator magnets we used to use. Other things, like his favorite jacket and the sweater he wore when we met, I stoicly repacked because I still can’t deal with them.

Did I mention the sun sets at 4:30 around here? And I am prone to SAD (seasonal affective disorder).

So this was my state of mind as I listened to my lunch companions talk. And oh, my poor heart ached. I would give anything to see Jeff one more time. Even if he had gone to be with another woman and left me destitute in the process, I would still be glad to know that he was alive and well. I’d be angry, of course, heartbroken and humiliated, but I so loved him that his well-being meant more to me than my own. (I’m only now learning to put myself first, but that could be because there’s no one left in my life to care about that deeply. I’ve lost them all one way or another — Jeff, the two brothers closest to me in age, my parents, a very special friend.)

I no longer know who has it worst when it comes to grief — the divorced, the widowed, those who lost a child, parent, lover, sibling, best friend, pet. I no longer care. We all suffer heartache and grief in our lives. We all deal with it as best as we can (or let it deal with us). In my case, this conversation mostly served to show me how vulnerable I still am, how much I still miss him, how much his being dead is still a part of my life.

God may provide, the universe might be unfolding as it should be, everything could be falling into place, my destiny might be waiting, life could be what is happening while I am making other plans (or whatever aphorism it is that you believe), but the truth is, at the moment, I am stressed to the limits.

I keep saying that however things turn out, I’ll be okay. And I mean it. Just not today.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: death, death of a father, death of a life mate, divorced vs widowed, seasonal affective disorder, uncoupled. 13 Comments »

Sorting and Storing and Stewing

December 1, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’ve spent the last couple of mornings sorting through my stuff, disposing of some, repacking the rest.

It’s hard because I need to be hard on myself. Do I really need three sets of pots and pans, a dozen assorted knives, and two sets of flatware? (His and mine.) Do I really need six lamps? (All ours.) What do I need to pack for long-term storage? What might I need in the next few months?

And it’s hard because I don’t know what life I am packing for. I plan to stay in this vicinity for a while longer, though I have no idea what that “stay” will involve since I don’t know how long I will be allowed to live in my father’s house, and the very thought of renting an apartment and settling down for the duration of a lease gives me the willies.

[Just spent an hour looking for the origin of the phrase “gives me the willies.” Apparently, it’s been around for hundreds of years since it shows up in print in the nineteenth century. Though there is much speculation about the origins of this particular phrase, no one knows for sure. One possibility comes from William Morris, the Wo rd Detective, who speculates that willies might come from the name of a Slavic sprite called a vila (plural vili “sprites”) sometimes translated as wili.]

Nor do I know what my life will be like a few months from now. Will I give in to the need to be mobile and deal with the discomforts and dangers of being a nomad? Will I give in to the need to be warm and comfortable and deal with the stagnation and entropy of being settled? If I opt to be a nomad, will I get a camper, or set out on foot? If I opt to settle down, will I find a place here or in Colorado?

Still, despite the difficulty of sorting through my stuff (and despite detours to look up unfamilar etymologies), I am making progress. I figure several months after the house is sold and the new people have moved in, I’ll be ready to leave here. I wonder if the new people will mind that their guest room comes with a ready-made guest. I’m thinking yes, they’d mind, so I’d better get back to my sorting and storing and stewing over my future.

The way I figure it, though, however things turn out, I’ll be okay. It’s the uncertainly of getting to where things have turned out that gives me something to try not to stew over.

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: etymology, gives me the willies, moving, packing, stew over, word detective. 3 Comments »

Bah Humbug

November 30, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I went to see a movie at a theater today, the first time in maybe thirty years. (Yeah, came as a shock to me too when I realized that.) And it might be another thirty years before I go to a movie theater again — for sure the friend I went with will not invite me a second time. I didn’t have the proper attitude, I guess.

We saw a kid’s Christmas movie that was cute enough, but it seemed like just another stale story with an emphasis on the importance of believing in Santa Claus. Maybe the problem for me is that I never did get the whole Santa Claus thing, don’t understand why it is so vital to believe that particular myth especially since Santa has nothing to do with what used to be a religious celebration.

Although I never thought of Santa as real, I didn’t feel any less magic during the season because of the lack. In fact, I do not know of a single classmate who did believe the Santa Claus myth. There really was no way to believe since our parents insisted on our writing thank you notes to everyone who gave us a present. And for me, since I have always had a need to understand and an overweening sense of fairness, it made sense that the rich kids got a lot of presents and the not so rich only a few. But if Santa really did bring the gifts — well, he played favorites and so wasn’t worth believing in.

Mostly, for us, Santa was a store decoration, a cartoonish symbol of the season. What occupied our childish imaginations were the lights, the tree, the stockings, the crèche, the department store windows, the bustle to buy what gifts we could, making a Christmas list for our parents, the wonderful smell of holiday treats baking, the speculation of what the gifts under the tree might be, and even sometimes, the majestic church service.

And yet almost every kid’s Christmas movie emphasizes the need to believe in Santa Claus. Often, the child character is starting to disbelieve, but after meeting Santa or going to the North Pole or getting a visit from an elf, magically the child’s belief in the red-garbed gent is reinstated, which to me negates the whole theme of believing. If you see that something exists, it’s not “believing” — it’s “knowing.” If the child character sees such a mythical place as the North Pole peopled with elves and flying reindeer, then the belief would be fortified even if the kid didn’t see Santa, so again, a choice to belief in Santa is no stretch of the imagination.

I suppose belief is an important attribute, but what one believes should be more significant than a once-a-year mythic character.

Yeah, I know — I don’t have the proper attitude. It was just a kid’s movie, after all, and not at all worth mulling over. And yet, here I am, bah humbugging.

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Posted in culture, history/myth, life. Tags: bah humbug, belief in Santa Claus, Christmas, Santa Claus, the Santa Claus myth. 2 Comments »

An Easy Hike

November 29, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I haven’t been on any hikes recently. I’ve been taking a couple of extra dance classes and also preparing for a show (my class will be doing two numbers at a dance performance put on by the local college next weekend), and I wanted to make sure I didn’t jeopardize that privilege by overdoing it. My body is used to the extra classes now, so when a friend invited me to go on an easy group hike with her this morning, I accepted. It didn’t seem like it would be a very scenic hike — it was more to explore a water system from the 1800s than to enjoy the scenery — but I’ve been trying to walk more in preparation for . . . I still don’t know what. Some sort of long, long, long walk perhaps. And this seemed a perfect opportunity to stretch myself a bit.

We met at a nearby dam and signed in. Since the Sierra Club sponsored the hike, we had to sign a waiver. I didn’t think anything of it — after all, I’d done Sierra Club hikes before, and anyway, it was an easy hike, only three miles, according to the English chap who led the group.

The scenery at our meeting place wasn’t very inspiring — just a lot of dirt bike trails carved haphazardly out of the desert floor by bikers — but after we climbed through the gate meant to keep out cars, and walked leisurely across the top of the dam, there were some pretty sights, including this rare example of fall colors in the desert.

We took a break so everyone could catch up to the leader, and then we continued up the path. The operative word here is “up.” The path started with a gentle incline that got steeper and steeper as we climbed. At one point, the only way I could make it up a sharper than 45-degree angle was on hands and knees. Embarrassing, but effective.

Our leader promised us that was the hardest part of the hike, but then we started our even steeper descent on sand and scree. (I had to pause here and reflect. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “scree” in my entire life, never had reason to. Amazingly, I was able to dredge the correct word out of my magpie brain.) I wish I could announce that I descended that hill gracefully, but once (okay, I admit it — twice) my feet slid out from beneath me and I ended up “bum sledding” as the English chap called it.

“It’s easy from here,” the chap said when we all made it (one way or another) to the bottom of the path. “Easy from here?” I responded. “Wasn’t the whole hike supposed to be easy?” He said, “When we get back, it always seems to have been so easy.”

But we weren’t yet back. There was still a rusted and rotted water pipe to hike along for several yards (someone suggested that I use my trekking pole as a balancing pole, and it worked! Or maybe it’s all those relevés I’ve been doing in ballet class.) After the water pipe episode, we had to wade through a sand field where my legs sunk halfway up to my knees, ford a river, and climb one last 45-degree hill.

We returned to the cars three and a half hours after we started. Allowing a generous hour for breaks and a snack, we’d been hiking for at least two and a half grueling hours. Even at my slowest uphill pace, I walk a mile in thirty minutes, so I have no idea how long the hike really was. At least four, but probably closer to five miles.

We gathered around for a brief post-hike retrospective. The English chap asked if anyone was hurt. We all took stock and admitted we were fine.

He beamed at me and said, “See? An easy hike.”

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Posted in culture, life, photography. Tags: fall colors in the desert, group hike, hiking in the desert, Sierra Club. 6 Comments »

The Importance of Links

November 28, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I visited a friend’s blog the other day and followed some links back to an older post I’d missed, where I left a comment. The blogger contacted me, expressing concern that I got hacked because a) I seldom leave comments — yeah, I know, it’s terrible of me; I’m lucky I have time to respond to the comments so kindly left on my own blog and b) it was an older post.

That episode reminded me of the lastingness of blog posts. (Is lastingness a word? Spellchecker seems to think so. I don’t see that squiggly red line that so often berates me.) Some of my most visited blog posts are older ones — a few from my “writing hints” days, a couple from my “anything goes” days, and several from my early grief days.

Because blog posts are eternal, as eternal as the internet is anyway, the links we include are important.

In the case of my blogger friend, the links I followed were generated by Word Press, so they were all live links. In the case of links we add to our blogs — well, that’s a different story, especially when it comes to my blog. The links to older blog posts that I add to current blog posts are good — I never change the domain or the URL, so those links all work. But links I posted that link to other websites . . . yikes.

I used to link all my books to a certain independent bookseller’s website. Mostly I did it out of loyalty since all those links helped the ranking of the website, but doing so also served as a salvo in my own private war against Amazon. It seemed to me that Amazon overruns its banks and floods everything in its path, and I wanted to do what I could to stem the rushing waters. But I miscalculated, and now the Amazon river gods are laughing at me. Most of the book links in my blogs now go somewhere besides the requisite book page on that independent bookseller’s site, and I have yet to fix the more than five thousand links I have posted over the years. The current links all work (I capitulated and now they go to my book pages on Amazon) but the links in older posts, well, let’s just say they’re defunct and leave it at that.

The webmasters of that other site didn’t seem to see the importance of redirecting the links when the company changed domains, and I could not convince them otherwise. The web is all about links — if there were no links, we’d never be able to move from one page to another. It’s the links that make the internet an interconnecting network. It’s the links that make the web a web. And because the network/web is eternal, those links are eternal. And now I have an eternity of defunct links.

I’m gradually changing the links, but if you ever click on a link that doesn’t take you to the proper page, please let me know so I can fix it.

Thank you.

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Posted in blogging, internet. Tags: Amazon, importance of links, interconnected links, the internet as interconnected links, the web as a web of links. 4 Comments »

Thank You, My Friend

November 27, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Of all the things I am grateful for today and every day, my friends (both online and off), rank the highest. You, my friend, have made these years of transition a special time for me, showing me that grief isn’t just about sadness and broken connections, but about growth, wonder, and new links to life.

It’s odd to think about, but if my currently deceased life mate/soul mate were somehow to return whole and healthy, I’m not sure I’d go back to him — I’d be leaving too much behind. Oh, heck, who am I kidding? I’d go back to him in a minute! But the truth is, I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision. I still have dances to learn, friends to enjoy, places to go, adventures to undertake.

I panic at times about the uncertainty of my future, but even that uncertainty is something to be grateful for — uncertainty hides a plethora of undiscovered joys, friends as yet unmet, and untold possibilities. More than that, by your friendship, you have taught me that the future is not an unfriendly place. Once upon a time, you were part of an unknown future of mine, and now you are a significant presence in my life.

Thank you, my friend, for the blessings you have bestowed on me.

Wishing you a very happy day of thanksgiving, even if you don’t celebrate the American tradition of Thanksgiving Day.

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Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: friends, future not an unfriendly place, happy thanksgiving, thankful for friends, uncertainty of future. 8 Comments »

Murder in 100 Words by Pat Bertram

November 26, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Tom milled around the prison yard with the other inmates, waiting for the sound of death. There would be no stay of execution for their condemned mate, who would die in a most barbaric way.

“They don’t care that he’s innocent,” Tom said. “As are we all. The system is guilty, but no one wants to buck tradition.”

The thud of the axe made him flinch. He bowed his head out of respect for the dead.

In the silence, he heard the executioner’s voice drifting through the chicken wire fence. “It’s a big turkey. We’ll have a grand Thanksgiving feast.”

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Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: 100-word story, death row, fiction. 9 Comments »

Winter Heat Blog Hop

November 25, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I was invited to participate in the Winter Heat Blog Hop. A blog hop is a way of getting to view new blogs that are offering giveaways and opportunities to win prizes. Click here on this blue link to view the entire Winter Heat Blog Hop list!

As for my giveaway:

From now until December 5, you can download the first two books in the Rubicon Ranch trilogy for free. In case you’re not familiar with Rubicon Ranch, it was a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and was written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. No one knew the outcome of the novels before they were written — we just wrote our characters’ stories trying to prove simultaneously that they were the killer and that they were innocent. A real challenge, but according to Sheila Deeth, writer and reviewer extraordinaire, we succeeded.

Sheila wrote: I thoroughly enjoyed it. Different authors pen chapters from the points of view of different characters. But the end of each tale meshes perfectly with the next, and the story progresses, through twists and turns (and death), to its mysterious, perfectly logical conclusion, while the reader is left to guess, imagine, wonder, and reflect.

In the first book, Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a little girl’s body was found in the wilderness near the desert community of Rubicon Ranch. Was it an accident? Or . . . murder! But who would want to kill a child?

Click here to download a free ecopy of Rubicon Ranch Book One: Riley’s Story (no code necessary) in the ebook format of your choice from Smashwords.

In the second book, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces, residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Click here to download Rubicon Ranch Book Two: Necropieces in the ebook format of your choice from Smashwords. Be sure to use Code LT25A when ordering to get your free download. Offer expires December 5, 2014

These ebooks will make a great stocking stuffer. Just click on “Give as a gift” on the Smashwords page before proceeding to check out.

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