You've Got Mail (But Not The Kind I Remember)

I didn't expect this to be the most nostalgic stop of the entire tour. But as I stood in front of the wall of hundreds of gleaming brass boxes, I felt the air suck out of me and was transported back in time, thirty years, to be exact.

I was nineteen and scanned the wall of boxes for my assigned number. I found it quickly after the other students moved aside. My fingers hastily worked the combination, and I peered through the little window in the box. I could see one, maybe two, envelopes, a couple fliers, and maybe... I swung the little door open and reached inside. Yessss! A pink slip!

The only picture I took of the entire tour-- the wall of mail boxes.

"When I was in college," I told my daughter, opening with that qualifier, not for the first time that day, "we got a pink slip in our box if we had a package. Your worse day could suddenly change if there was one of those in your box!" The tour guide continued in her perky tone as I wandered back in my memory.

No bigger than a memo slip, Pepto-Bismol pink, that piece of paper held the power to make an entire day. If I got one, I'd quickly rush to the mail window and hand the worker my slip. Why did she move so slowly? I watched her disappear behind the wall. Anxious students in the queue behind me shifted feet, impatiently waiting their turn, gripping their own amazing pink slips. Finally. She rounded the corner. I glued my eyes on the box in her hands. That was mine!

"Thank you," I said as I took the package, addressed to me in my mother's handwriting. I tucked it under my arm. Half the fun would be carrying it to my next class where I knew other students would stare at it with envy. A box from home meant cookies and goodies to share with dorm mates, maybe a new shirt or pair of earrings Mom had picked up on her last shopping trip, and probably a little cash tucked into a new pair of socks-- a little extra spending money treat. I couldn't wait to get back to my dorm room and rip into it, and yet waiting and wondering what was inside was delicious. In the meantime, there was a letter from a high school friend written on lined notebook paper to read and one from my grandpa written in his slightly shaky hand writing on sheets of white stationery. He and I had recently started exchanging shy letters with each other, and I relished the opportunity to get to know him a bit better.

"We don't do pink slips anymore." The tour guide must have overheard my comment, bringing me back to the present. "Now we will send you an email if you have a package." She smiled at the small group of students and parents.

No pink slip? Where was the fun in that? But then I thought over the four years my son was in college. I sent him packages, but I don't know if we ever exchanged a single, real, hand-written letter. He was more likely to respond to me in a quick text or email than ever sit down and write a real letter. In fact, I could hardly remember the last time I wrote a real letter to anyone. How sad.

I realized, as we walked away from the beloved mail room of my alma mater and on to the cafe, serving lattes and frappuccinos (that wasn't there when I attended this college, I hastily pointed out, yet again, to my daughter) that the art of letter writing was quickly dying. What will future biographers use to research the hearts and stories of people's lives? A transitory email that no longer exists? A text message lost in the cell phone universe? It's all so temporary and fleeting anymore. No longer will there be a box of letters hidden beneath the cedar-scented blankets of a hope chest, a written history of someone's life and relationships. My kids Skype with their long distance friends. We exchanged letters and carefully posed pictures (you didn't want to waste the film on your 110 cartridge by making a funny face).

The campus has changed in so many ways. Most of the changes, including a state-of-the-art music performance hall, and gorgeous new wellness center, are welcomed, a true enticement for future students. But, I thought as I glanced one final time at the mail room before we left the building, I'm not sure all changes are for the best.

Angels Among Us

Microsoft clipart

Have you ever spoken with a fireman, or someone who places their life on the line for the protection of others?  It might be tempting to assume they receive an adrenalin thrill or ego boost when they're out on the job, but if you dig a bit deeper, I suspect you'd find a more noble motivation is really in their hearts. 

Several months ago, I had a conversation with a volunteer fireman. Somehow in the midst of our random gab we fell into the topic of religion. He happened to mention he was "religious", without providing me a more specific definition. That was all right; I didn't feel compelled to probe. 

I told him that church and religion have always swirled all through my life, and yet sometimes I still struggled to find God, to make him real. 

He simply replied, "Get in a fire someday, you'll figure it out."

I wanted to hear more. "How so?" I asked.

"It's God in you," he replied. "Angels help you find your way out when you're in the fire."

I grew silent, thinking about his words. "How do you know it's angels and not just your wits and skills leading you out?" I finally asked.

He hedged. "You wouldn't believe me. I swear I have seen angels."

I'd like to believe there are angels among us. I want to believe that. I've seen goodness in people, certainly, but, honestly, never an angel. "What do they look like?" I wanted to know.

"All good things," he responded. "No face, you just feel the goodness in them. The love. It's amazing."

My doubt nagged at me, and I searched to find a logical explanation, but, really, who was I to question his experience? Perhaps when he was in the fear and inferno of a burning building, when the heat feels like hell itself, and smoke obscures up from down and right from left, he truly is guided by angels. I have no reason to doubt his experience. Maybe he sees them because he has to look for them. He needs them. 

Maybe I don't see angels because I don't look for them. I don't think I need to see an angel. I think I already know right from left and up from down. Or maybe it's just that my building hasn't burned hot enough. 

As we drifted off to other subjects, I kept thinking about his angels. Safe skepticism still nagged in my brain, but I didn't voice my questions. I hoped he'd continued to see his angels and that they'd keep on guiding and protecting him each time he was out being a hero fighting fires or rescuing people. 

And I hoped, someday, I would see one too. But his words carried a bit of a warning, or perhaps a challenge about finding that angel: Get in a fire someday; you'll figure it out.

Echoes Of an Abandoned Era

Source

We sat in a circle in my basement, sleeping bags spread out. Someone held a flashlight under her chin and told a ghostly story. “She was sent to Mayview after she got in trouble. The police brought her home, but she was never seen again. They say,” the story teller paused dramatically, “she killed herself in her room. But it is said she still walks the halls every night, crying.”

I listened with rapt horror, picturing the brick edifice barely seen beyond the trees and gate with the big sign, “Mayview State Hospital”.  Everyone knew the place was real, and in the ignorance of our age and the times, it was the place where you were made to go if you were crazy or criminal.

Mayview was originally a poorhouse erected along the Monongehela River in downtown Pittsburgh in the mid- 1800s. In 1893 the poorhouse was renamed the Marshalsea Poorhouse, after the famous London debtor’s prison where Charles Dicken’s father is said to have been held. A plummeting economy soon forced the overcrowding of Marshalsea  and sometime in the late 1800s acreage in Bridgeville, PA, near where I grew up, was founded as a new location. The facility was eventually renamed Mayview in an effort to change its poorhouse reputation. Mayview not only housed the poor, but unwed mothers, those with tuberculosis and the mentally retarded and later, through a forensics unit, criminals.

Source

According to one report in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, old films from the 1930s depict primitive techniques of mental care including cold packing, thermal baths and steam cabinets. All this, of course, long before psychiatric drugs were known or available. It was believed isolation from society was best for these patients. 

Often babies were born in the hospital to unwed mothers or possibly as a result of relations within the walls. The hospital records labeled the babies’ records as “mater amentes” (mother insane) or “illigitimus”.  One commenter of an online article wrote her grandmother was there for 16 years between 1929 and 1945 and believed to have got pregnant while at the facility. The commenter writes, "Rumor has it that a MD at Mayview was the father."

As kids, we’d drive by the brick building with its turrets and try to see inside the gates. In hushed tones we might speculate on some absent student’s demise within the walls or the story of the crazy girl locked in the tower or the leak of a rumored suicide in the corridors of the building. Our ignorance, both because of our youth and because of the lack of known information about mental illness at the time, elaborated and spread the stories and myths hidden within Mayview.

The building finally closed its doors and philosophy in 2008. While it’s easy to say thank goodness for progress, it didn’t shut without controversy. Within the gates were a coal mine that supplied electricity to the facility, pastures and barns for cows that provided milk, gardens and kitchens where vegetables were canned providing over 60% of the patient’s food. It was reported that many people living in the facility and made to work in the garden, barns and laundry found purpose and meaning in the daily tasks, while others, in the burgeoning field of psychiatric care, accused the facility of cruel work programs for the patients.

As recent as 2007, as patients were being released in preparation for the closing of the hospital, stories of tragedy surfaced. Two patients, Anthony Fallert and Ahson J. Abdullah met untimely and violent deaths shortly after being released. Mr. Fallert was said to have jumped off a bridge ending his life, and Mr. Abdullah was struck by a train as he walked the tracks near his home. Tragic cases such as these highlighted the need for transitional care for the patients in light of their release and perpetuated the stories of horror and haunting within Mayview's walls. One person leaving a comment on a post said, “I don’t remember any [deaths] when I was a patient there in 1969, but there was a lobotomy. pretty much the same thing. allot shock treatments too.”

Source

The buildings have been torn down. Even a milk barn first built in 1917, which historians and preservationists in the area fought to preserve, was destroyed. I imagine the area has been bought and will find a new use. But as I looked through the pictures of the abandon buildings, I feel a haunting of the souls who lived there and wonder at the stories that only a few who lived and worked within the walls will ever, truly know.

Sources:

http://www.abandonedonline.net/hospitals/mayview-state-hospital/

http://www.abandonedonline.net/2011/06/14/inside-mayview-state-hospital/

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/mayview-state-hospital-last-reminder-of-a-lost-era-closes-626780/

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-south/giving-new-life-to-old-hospitals-241579/

For pictures and more information check out a few of these Youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od7AWdE2P9M (about the milk barn)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKKfSwkyeU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7q9_jqJE_0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cY-_rBNvNo

The Jogging Thread

If life is a tapestry with many, varied threads, jogging is the errant fiber that runs through my fabric, never quite blending in. I grew up with athletic siblings—they were both involved in track and cross country activities, fit, in-shape and earning their letter jackets. I was the somewhat fluffy younger sister who loved reading, singing, playing piano or guitar and an occasional game of Scrabble with my mom. I was not athletic.

I took up jogging in college, along with an eating disorder, and while my body slimmed down, my self-esteem plummeted. I eventually quit the eating weirdness, but jogging stuck with me. Somehow, through bearing babies, weight-gains and losses, jogging remained an activity in my workout repertoire. When I turned 40, I decided to tackle the decade with a commitment to participate in a half-marathon. You note I didn’t say compete. My goal was merely to complete the entire race without collapsing.

I learned a whole host of new terms like fartleks, intervals, lactate threshold, negative splits and other foreign sounding words. I bought expensive shoes to help my natural foot pronation, and clothing made of wicking fabric to keep sweat off my skin. I started visiting a local outdoor gear shop and talking running with the owner, an avid and, in my opinion, somewhat crazed runner. He loved talking running lingo with me. And for this brief six month period of my life, I was no longer a jogger. I was a runner.

It was amazing to me the number of people who suddenly wanted to talk about my recovery runs and split times. I always felt a bit like a fraud, like they would discover I wasn't really a part of their club. I was just a woman trying to defy my 40^th birthday. You may be thinking, sounds like you were a real runner to me. But that’s the beauty of deception and here’s how I knew I was a fake, a wannabe: Every time I talked to one of those crazed-runner-types, they’d get this far-away look in their eyes and a slight smile on their wind-chapped lips and ask me in a dreamy tone, “Don’t you just love that runner’s high? The endorphins… man, I’m addicted.” 

I’d stare at them with complete lack of comprehension, my mind racing to come up with a response. The truth is, in all my years of jogging and even racing 5ks, 10ks and the infamous half-marathon, I never felt a runner’s high. I had no concept of what it was like to feel addicted to working out.  Each and every run was an act of discipline, a goal to be achieved.  

Now I’m not saying I never derived pleasure from a run. I liked getting lost in my head, listening to my footsteps and breathing, a hypnotic syncopation keeping me company on a long outing. I liked that I could train my body to move intensely for 13 miles. But I never really liked running. I was a fraud.

Years after I completed the race (and I did complete it within my goal time and earned my t-shirt), I quit running quite so much and following the strict diet. I could almost see the disappointment in the shop owner’s face as he asked me if I still ran, probably noting the ten pounds that had since crept back on my body. “I jog,” I told him. He nodded and dismissed me. Eventually he quit asking.

I still jog a couple times a week, three slow miles. I savor the time outside with my dog, enjoying the lovely scenery. I still have to talk myself into going each and every time. But I do it because it’s good for me, good for the Dog-Dog and it’s still a great head-clearing time to think and process. 

I may not be in the company of running enthusiasts anymore, but I have a feeling I’m in the very fine and friendly company of people like me fighting the middle-aged bulge, trying to stay healthy without knee replacements. That’ll do just fine.

Confessions Of A Dog Sniffer

I'll be writing or trying to write when suddenly, I just get stuck. The words won't come. My mind grows mute. Usually, when this happens I get up from my chair and just walk away from my desk and the computer.

Sometimes I wander out to the kitchen, which is never a good solution for a woman in constant battle with the scale. Mostly, though, what I like to do is wander to my bedroom where I know Dog-Dog is curled up on the bed, probably with his head tucked in so his neck is bunched up, which means he's probably also snoring to wake the dead.

I like to stick my head in that little space between his face and the front of his body and snuggle in. He usually sighs loudly, as if he's putting up with yet another interruption from his human-- as if it's really not his problem I'm avoiding writing again, and why must I insist on disturbing his nap for my lack of creativity? Occasionally, however, he'll act happy to see me and thump his stubby, little tail.

But here's where it gets kind of weird. With my face buried in his neck, I take a big long sniff. He stinks. He always smells like a dog, even after a bath. And then I tell him, my voice muffled by fur and the folds in his crooked neck, "You are a tinky dog!"  Yes, "tinky". It's, um, baby-talk for "stinky".

Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of cutsie-speak. I roll my eyes at parents who use baby-talk with their...well.. babies. I'm quite sure I never spoke like that with my children! How would they ever learn correct English? But it's different with Dog-Dog. I'm positive, as demonstrated by his lack of obedience, he doesn't understand English at all. In fact, I'm not even sure he speaks Dog all that well. So I make my voice little and replace or eliminate letters in my words and with my face stuffed in his smelly folds ask him, "Are you my baby? Are you my tinky, tinky baby?"

If he's not totally exasperated with me by now and struggling to get up and jump off the bed and away from me--if he's in a snugging mood--his tale will wag very fast at my tone of voice, which makes me speak like that even more. It's an insidious and somewhat pathetic cycle I'm really glad no one actually ever witnesses, and until now, was my own dirty little secret.

But here's where it gets worse. Worse than muffled baby-talk to your dog? Yes. I sniff him again and sigh with full contentment. His stink is his own unique smell and when I breathe it in, I smell my Dog-Dog, and I have to tell him I love him, "I wuvs you! I wuvs my tinky dog-dog!" And I sniff again.

I'm not sure if cats have the same unique smell and maybe a cat owner is reading this right now feeling a bit superior about their cleaner animal who would never, ever put up with the indignation of sniffing humans and people who refuse to add proper consonants to their words. Or maybe a non-pet owner is reading this feeling affirmed by their gut instinct to never, ever be an animal owner and degrade into a pitiful baby-talking, animal-sniffing human being. But I have compassion for those folks. They'll never know the joy of an animal glad to see them or keep them company during a long writing day. They'll never experience the deeply satisfying feeling of animal-cuddles that slow the heart rate and calm the mind.

It's okay, though. The rest of us cooing, sniffing messes can form a club. All you have to do is sign beneath the following statement:

I pwomise to wuv and snuggle and snuffle my wittle animal and tell him (or her) that he (or she) is the best wittle dog-dog (or cat-cat) in the whole world, several times a day.

Signature here: ___________________________________________________

I feel much better having come clean. I don't feel silly at all anymore now that there is an official club of such fine, animal-loving company.

Official Badge

When The Lake Recedes And Brigadoon is Revealed

Gunnison River normally not seen beneath the lake.

This past weekend, my husband and I, along with our dog, Blue, took a walk on the lake bed of Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water in Colorado. Blue Mesa is fed by the Gunnison River which eventually flows into the spectacular and dramatic Black Canyon. Once, fifty years ago, farm and ranch lands thrived in the area where the lake now resides. In the early 60's, the state of Colorado began plans to dam up the river, creating the huge reservoir. But this meant displacing homesteads in the valley. By 1965, the deed was complete and houses and ranches that once stood were razed, their trees cut down and foundations left.

The water line can reach as high as the widest part of the top of the pylons. 

Unfortunately, due to drought conditions this past year, the lake is at 40% capacity, which means it is frightfully low, down to the river that originally fed it in some places. But it also means we get to walk along the bed that would normally be covered by water well above our heads. Embedded in the silt are old tires, buckets, shoes and beer cans—all modern artifacts telling stories of boaters and fishermen who, in better water level summers, enjoyed the lake in this area. As we walked, we saw a small, pink shoe wedged in a log. I wondered about the child tubing or perhaps on the nearby shore who might have lost her little shoe. A few feet beyond, we found the matching shoe wedged in yet another log. At least she lost them both.

The matching shoe was stuck just a few feet away.

A bit further on, we discovered a foundation for a house and what looked like a building that was once a shed. There were still old rusty nails and a large rusty pulley laying on the cement foundation. A partial stone walk looked like it led up to a larger cement pad that was probably the house foundation. I scanned the shore to get my bearings. Last summer, when the water wasn’t yet quite this low, I had taken a walk along the shore directly in front of this house and found shards of pottery and crockery. They might have washed up from remnants left behind at this very house. An eerie feeling settled on me, imagining the lives who once inhabited this home.

Brown, roundish object in the foreground is a pulley. You can see the foundation's corner in back.

House foundation. And beyond, evenly spaced posts-- probably the remains of fence posts.

Large tree trunks lined what I imagined was once the yard and driveway. Maybe they had towered and provided welcomed shade, a secluded spot for a child to play under. Fence posts, now shaved close to the ground, were evenly spaced showing where the yard may have been. We walked on behind the house, closer to the river. What an ideal location this had probably been for ranching with a ready water source nearby. Sure enough, we came to cement structures that looked like they were once irrigation canal gates. We could even still see the barriers someone had raised and lowered to control the flow of water.

All that is left of once large shade trees.

Blue is happily lost in smells; the cement remains of an irrigation gate are behind him.

I wondered about the family who once lived here. Did they leave willingly? Was the wife secretly glad to leave this large and lonely patch of land? Did the children finally get to live closer to town, the schools and their friends? Did the rancher feel displaced and lost without the land he, and probably his father before him, had toiled over?  Did the kids ever miss playing under the shade of those big trees? I felt haunted by their stories, the part they played in the history in our town. 

Walking around in the shadows and ghosts of their lives, I couldn’t help thinking about this family and feeling folks like them were the backbone and foundation of our valley's development. I felt a little like uninvited company as I picked up and examined a piece of brick or corner of siding from their home, long buried under water. Like Brigadoon, I couldn't help feeling as if we were rare and privileged visitors of a place that only shows itself in years of drought, when the water recedes revealing the lives of fine folks who one lived, slept, and raised children on this land. 

Epic Car Trips of Forced Family Togetherness

One of my dad's station wagons we inherited when we were first married.

My family is preparing to take a road trip of epic and insane proportions. My mother in Pittsburgh recently downsized from a large condominium to an assisted living country club, and all her excess stuff that somehow I convinced myself we couldn’t possibly just get rid of, was put into a storage unit. Now, we need to go pick it all up, because obviously we can’t survive without all that stuff.

We live in Colorado. This will be no small undertaking.

However, since my son graduates from college next month and my daughter is heading into her senior year of high school, my spousal unit and I decided that this might be the last time we are all together for ten days...in very close proximity...before our lives splinter off in different directions. Given the distance, this is really a very short timeframe and will require long days of driving from point A to point B, which really brings me to all the memories I have of long car trips when I was little. They are not especially good memories.

When I was a young lass, back in the sixties and early seventies, we'd take an annual vacation to some distant land, usually Rhode Island to see my mother’s kin or Ohio to see my father’s family. The actual car trips, our long hours together, squashed in the backseat of various used station wagons my father sensibly purchased, had a consistent theme of boredom, antics and excessive sweating.

My brother, sister and I are all four years apart, with me being the youngest. This birth order was intentional and part of my parent’s “never have more than one child in college” tuition plan. But it meant that back seat trips were a sibling hierarchy of control--who got to sit by the windows. As the youngest, I usually landed in the middle slot. After several long, hot, sticky hours sweating against vinyl seats, it was inevitable—in the days before you could numb your children out with head sets of music or videos—that we would end up in squabbles. Someone was touching/stole a pillow/hit/gave a dirty look to someone else. Slapping and yelling and crying would ensue. And that was usually from my father.

After repeated attempts to settle us down so that my dad could drive and read peacefully (yes, he would attempt reading while driving—it was the seventy’s version of texting and driving for the intellectual), the shenanigans were tolerated no more. My father, his face red, his neck muscles twitching and his foot pressing the gas pedal in time to his outbursts, reached behind with his right hand, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, and began randomly smacking children. I was in the middle, but I was little and managed to duck out of the way at least fifty percent of the time.

Eventually, we'd pull over at a designated rest stop and were forced to use the primitive potties and stretch our legs. My mom always packed sandwiches, chips, cut up celery and carrots and maybe made a batch of cookies. We begged to stop at an orange roofed Howard Johnson’s or maybe one of the golden arched McDonalds, but my dad almost always refused. I wanted to find out if we bought a burger at McDonald’s if they’d run out and change their sign: over five billion and one hamburgers sold.

But no frivolous expenditures, air conditioning or cold sodas with ice cubes for us. No sir. The big green thermos jug filled with refreshing iced tea made from a powder mix was hauled out, and we had a picnic on the pulled down tailgate of the car. If we were lucky, there might be a picnic table with rough wood benches resulting in long splinters to be pulled out of the back of sweaty thighs. Then we'd pile back into the now sweltering station wagon, waiting for a wave of car sickness to hit one of us, forcing the car over again for an impromptu rest stop and maybe to throw away a pillow.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I’m approaching our road trip in June with much higher expectations. Our kids are older and our family dynamics are different. Still, I can’t help wondering what we’ll discover about each other corralled in a car for eight or nine hour stretches. Maybe there will be a few rest stops along the way and I can share a family memory or two. After all, they'll be forced to listen. And if they don't? There's always random smacking...