Hands

When I was a little girl, I wanted hands like my grandmother’s.  My Grandma Cecil, aka Eloise Beyette, my mother’s mother, had hands that worked.  

Hands that dug in the red East Texas dirt and planted acres and acres of beans, cucumbers, okra, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, peas, beets, greens.  Hands that picked all those vegetables, out in the hot summer sun, with no hat, no gloves. Hands that canned a year’s worth of fruit and vegetables in just under a week.  

Hands that hung tons of wet laundry on the line.  Hands that took the stiff, dried pine-and red-dirt-and-fresh-air scented clothes, towels, and linens off the line, and folded, hung, and put them away, over and over.  Hands that made beds, cleaned bathrooms, vacuumed and dusted.

Hands that upholstered furniture finer than any store-bought upholstery.  Hands that made beautiful satin curtains that lasted for years and fancy evening wear dresses that made my sister Kim the belle of the ball in Houston high society.  

Hands that painted every inch of her house inside and out, ceilings and cabinets included, over and over.  Hands that built a chair with a 2-man cross-saw all by themselves, when she was just 16 years old and wanted a chair and was tired of waiting on my grandpa to get her one.

Hands that hauled firewood off the carport and into the fireplace.  Hands that tended the fire.

Hands that pushed a hand mower through lowland boggy grass on the other side of the creek and across acres of pine-tree dotted lawn.  Hands that raked and picked up all the pine straw and pine cones on that lawn, piling them up in huge bundles to be burned. Hands that burned trash and yard debris.  

Hands that rolled out dough and cut and baked thousands, possibly millions of buttermilk biscuits, and then served them to the men working with her husband and friends and family.  Hands that made the best hamburgers and chicken fried steak and pot roast ever. Hands that cooked 3 hot meals a day for her whole life, except those days she drove into Houston to work.  

Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, and biscuits for breakfast.  Sandwiches for lunch. Fried fish, fried chicken, fried steak, fried okra, fried squash, french fries for dinner.  Pot roast for Sundays. German Chocolate Cake for special occasions. Barbequed chicken out in her big cast-iron cauldron out past the carport for really special occasions.  And hands that cranked and cranked and cranked the best homemade peach ice cream ever, out back of the house.

Hands that washed dishes, pots, and pans for all that food, in scalding hot soapy water--without gloves--every day of her long life. Hands that never touched a dishwasher. Hands that chopped ice blocks into chips with a hand-held ice pick, because it tasted better that way--she didn't believe in refrigerator ice-makers. Hands that used towels and pot holders to handle hot pans when they no longer had handles.

Hands that scaled and beheaded and boned thousands of fish that my grandpa caught on his lakes. Hands that helped him build those lakes and stock the minnow ponds and catfish ponds.

Hands that killed many a snake.  Copperheads and rattlesnakes, mostly.  Often right out the back door on the carport, while she was getting in the car.  “Hand me that hoe,” she’d say in her calm voice, motioning to the utility closet, “there’s a copperhead right by my foot,” one hand on the open car door and one foot on the floor board already, the other foot still as it could be on the concrete floor.  I’d hand her the hoe, and chop, there goes the head, the snake is dead, and she’d hop in the car, and off we’d go.

Hands that drove her beat up old boat of a Chevrolet Impala even when her legs barely worked anymore.

Hands that ran the Sears home kitchen goods department in the fanciest Sears store in Houston, back when there was such a thing.  Hands that drove her and her best friend there every morning, off at 6 am or so.

Hands that could control dogs that we were afraid of, dogs that sent men to the hospital, dogs that we approached with great caution and treats.

When I was in my 20s, I saw her lift a hot cast iron dutch oven with a pot roast out of the oven and put it on the stovetop like it was a book of matches.  I tried to pick up the pot, and I could barely budge it. She was at least in her 80s by then.

She was probably in her 80s before her hands ever even touched a remote control.  She had hands that dialed heavy metal phones and changed channels on the tv by turning knobs.

When my grandpa and my cousin died within months of each other, she turned her hands to making arrangements and taking them to their graves.  Her hands cleaned the headstones, scrubbing them with clorox and soap. Her hands gathered greenery from the woods and flowers from the florist and turned them into arrangements that were pure art of the heart.  Pure love. Her hands began to take photos of her creations and collected the photos in a portfolio.

My mother was a creator too, of children and food and clothes and homes, an artist of the beautiful, but her hands were not like her mother’s.  They were softer and whiter. They got gnarled a bit with age and arthritis, like my grandmother’s, but they were not as strong, not as spotted by sun, not as wrinkled, ever.

My hands are still forming. At first I tried to make them wrinkled like my grandmother’s by not wearing moisturizer or sunscreen and by doing lots of things with them.  But my hands will never look like her’s. Mine were formed by softballs, bats, gloves, footballs, basketballs, pianos, typewriters, pens, pencils, colors, marbles, monkey bars, jungle gyms, swings, slides, see saws, jacks, and light household chores.

What will touch screens, remote controls, voice-activated technology, and smart phones do to my hands?  I hardly use any pressure or fine motor skills using these devices. Sometimes I don’t use my hands at all.  I never cook a pot roast in a cast iron dutch oven and haul it to the stove top. I can just cook it by pressing a button on InstaPot.

I notice the hands of people under 30.  Their fingertips are insubstantial, thin, wispy, and tapered--not designed for work--but lightning fast on screens of all sizes.  I have to mash down to get the “p” on my curved screen Android smartphone. They have no problem with their “p’s,” or anything else, on the screen; their thin, wispy fingers just barely graze the screen and letters magically appear.  

I feel stupid touching screens.  Hundreds of years of print and writing culture tell me that symbols on the page are not the thing itself and that touching the page does not affect the page, is not like pushing a button.  Yet, now I am supposed to touch a screen--smooth and slick--no buttons, no keys , and the screen is alive and is the thing. For me, raised on manual and then electric typewriters, where I had to make solid contact with a key, which made another key move and leave a mark on a page to create one letter and then another, and the words were clearly not the thing, and the typewriter was clearly not the thing, but a tool in a process, where all the boundaries were clear, like skin, muscles, and bones; like ligaments and tendons, nerves and blood vessels, organs and joints--one object in relation to another object--each distinct and with a purpose--for me the world of smartphones and touchscreens is unreal in some essential way.  Boundaryless.

Yes, the pressure of my touch causes ones and zeros to flash and codes are spoken and move in the ether beyond, behind, underneath the screen, but where are they, what are they, and what exactly is happening?  Symbols create symbols in a world of codes. No wonder it’s hard to know what’s real.

My fingertips were formed by pens and pencils, typewriters, and brushes.  My mind was formed by knowing how objects related in space and time to one another.  My emotions were formed by watching my parents and their parents and my brothers and sisters and other people and observing and reacting to their emotions and my own stimulated by theirs, and on and on in continuous, spiralling loops of connection.

The young ones with their slender fingertips that never had to push a key to make a letter and may have never held a hammer or driven a nail or operated a sewing machine, but fly lightning fast over screens, what are their sources of emotion and connection?  How are their minds and emotions and bodies being formed? What is happening to their hands?

My cat reaches his paw out over my hand.  A quiet plea to pet him with my hands. Hands that were formed by me, and by my grandmothers on both sides, my mother, my father, my grandfathers, and all those before us, and all we have ever done. Hands that are still forming. May they always work.

Eloise Williams Beyette at 16 years old

A Yogi's Journey: The Beginning

I started practicing yoga in 1992 as I was finishing my Ph.D. in English at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri.

I had been curious about yoga since I was a kid growing up in Zachary, Louisiana, when I saw a very fuzzy, grainy, static-filled Lilias Yoga and You on a PBS station that we could barely receive.  Zachary only got 3 TV stations clearly--ABC, CBS, and NBC--the big 3--but every now and then, if you got the antenna just right and the force was with you, you could get the PBS station too, and on some early mornings when no one else was in the room, I managed to get Lilias Folan's show.  According to a quick Google search, the show first aired in 1970, so I probably saw it then, when I was 10 years old.

I was fascinated.  I wanted to do this!  I would search for the show every chance I got, and every now and then got lucky and could watch a few minutes before the channel went out of range or a family member walked through the room and ridiculed me and changed the channel or turned off the TV.  These experiences left me with a very dreamlike impression of something far away and exotic that I wanted to experience.  It planted a seed that took a long time to germinate.  I almost forgot about it entirely.

Then one day in the early 1990s, I developed a heel spur, which led me to a series of podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons, the last (and best) of whom directed me to a  shoe store that specialized in orthotics.  The shoe consultant, David Fischer, mentioned that his sister, Joyce Fischer, worked for a chiropractor, Martin Orimenko.  I had also been interested in chiropractic--what was it, anyway?  And I had seen the chiropractor's place and liked the look of it. And I was getting disillusioned with western medicine, due to my experiences trying to heal the heel spur. I decided to try chiropractic.

I liked Martin Orimenko, and he helped me considerably, helping me become much more aware of my body and spirit.  He was a joy with whom to work, and I began to heal, thanks to the orthotics, practices I learned from the orthopedic surgeon, and working with Dr. Orimenko.

His office also had space for massage, something else I'd never tried but wanted to experience, and so I made my first massage appointment with a woman named Teresa Paskas.  She pointed out that my fingers were extraordinarily tight, something I had never noticed or thought about at all.  Gripping the pencil!  Oh, yes, and typing both on a typewriter and the computer keyboard.  Unconscious habits of holding my hands and using my fingers when I wrote, and here I was writing a dissertation for a degree in English and teaching writing.

Teresa told me that she had studied yoga and that in yoga you learned to use just the muscles you needed for an action and to relax all the others.  She said it looked like I had a death grip on my pen, and that I could learn to relax my fingers and just use the muscles I needed to hold the pen lightly.

Aha! I wanted to study yoga.  I wanted to learn to use just the muscles I needed for an action and no more.  I wanted to loosen the grip on my pen and hold it lightly.  I wanted to know what I was doing.  I wanted to be conscious.

I needed to find a teacher.  I had seen a yoga studio in one part of town, but it intimidated me--looked very intense and unusual even from the outside.  The office had fliers for yoga classes with Lyn Magee.  The fliers appealed to me and didn't look too scary.  I took one and started thinking about it.

Meanwhile I was working at a bakery, Pan Dora's Bakery, a magical place that opened the wonders of the world to me in many ways.  A co-worker there, Maia Geyer, was leaving for New York City after graduating from Washington University with an MFA in Dance, and as a parting gift for all of us at the bakery, she offered us a dance/movement class one Sunday afternoon.  I was incredibly stiff, but I loved it, and she incorporated some yoga in our free-form experimentation, and I was even more inspired to take a yoga class.

I kept telling my co-workers at the bakery about my desire to study yoga, talking it up, and mentioned Lyn Magee.  They told me that Lyn was a regular customer at the bakery, and said they'd introduce me the next time she came in.  She came in one day while I was working the counter, and someone introduced us, and she was a lovely, regular person who I immediately liked, friendly, down to earth, normal.  She told me when and where her class would meet and encouraged me to take a class, and that's how I got started.

I am still learning to loosen the death grip on my pen and in my fingers, and I am still learning to be conscious. Not quite as simple as I thought it would be when I got started. It has been a wild ride, and worth every moment.

Thank you to all my teachers, especially these first teachers who opened the doors for me and pointed out the way.  You got me started, and I am eternally grateful.

A Pelican’s View

On the days when I drive home from work at a reasonable hour, I often get stuck in one of the world’s most beautiful traffic jams. 

It’s the road alongside Torrey Pines State Preserve between La Jolla and Del Mar, where two or three lanes narrow to one lane for one intersection with a light, and then broaden again into two or three lanes.  We sit in our cars, crawling along, stopping and starting, often for a mile or half mile, as we wind our way around the curves in the road. Torrey Pines’ red, tree-covered cliffs and caves rise up on one side, the valley slooping down to the lagoon on the other. Stopped there, I feel like I’m in the woods.

Then the road curves west, and suddenly there’s the ocean, shimmering blue and gold for as far as the eye can see, with the dramatic red cliffs framing it high on one side, the bridge over the lagoon sweeping forward, and the cliffs of Del Mar’s velvety beaches stretching north far below.  It’s spectacular. 

And I often get to sit there for 20 minutes just looking at it, side by side, packed in with all the other people in their cars.  Most of us sitting alone in our cars, with our windows rolled up, looking straight ahead and stony faced, each in our own bubbles.

One day, sitting in the bubble of my little silver blue Fiat, staring out at the ocean, I looked up as a flock of pelicans flew by.  

They glided in a straight line over the line of the waves closest to shore.  Flapping their wings, then gliding, then flapping, on and on, in an instinctive rhythm.  Free, easy, and effortless.  In the air.  Over the ocean.  Not on asphalt.  Not in a metal box with windows rolled up and radio and AC on. No clothes on either.  Just beings in the air over the ocean, moving in harmony with the currents of the air, the ocean, their bodies.

“How strange we must look to them,” I thought.  “How primitive.  How bound.  How constrained and restricted.  Needing some other thing to carry us.  A hard metal thing spewing fumes, requiring so much maintenance and energy, isolating us.  And sitting all lined up, when there were so many other ways to go, other ways to move.” 

Do they wonder when we will wake up out of our dream and join them and fly free?

I certainly do. 

Thank you, pelicans and dolphins and whales, oceans and lagoons and waves, pines and cliffs and beaches, for being here and showing us the way.  May we roll down our windows and get out of our cars and into the water and onto the ground and feel the currents of air and water and look up and below and in every direction and feel and listen and see what the big, wide world has to offer.

Happy Birthday, Kimberly!

Yesterday, February 18th, was my sister Kim's birthday.  She would have been 58 years old.  Here we are in a tree in Zachary, Louisiana, in December 1964.  Kim, you are forever in my heart.

Happy Valentine's Month

Happy Valentine's Month!

I found this photo in my NYC archives, and my friend Barry fixed it up.  I was a little late for Valentine's Day, so I offer you this valentine for this whole next month. 

Love!

Happy Year of the Dog

Happy Year of the Dog!

May there be many moments of joy like this one!

In lieu of a letter recapping my year of 2017, here is a photo of one of my happiest moments of 2017--boogie boarding in Encinitas with Nicola and Gombo, a young boy who survived the earthquake in Nepal, living outside for months high in the Himalayas, and who we took out for his first experience of the Pacific ocean.  He took to the water like he was born to it.

Crows

Crows are high up in the eucalyptus trees, rocking back and forth, making a racket.

4 birds, 2 each on opposing branches, cawing at the same time, very loudly, a unison of screaming calls, and with each caw, each bird rocks.  Rocking pairs shouting at each other.

They pause at exactly the same time, and then, there they go again, as Reagan said in one of his debates, “There you go again.”  And they do, back and forth for at least a quarter of an hour.  Feels like an eternity.

What are they going on about?

I am out on the apartment complex grounds walking my cat Nobiya on a leash for his daily constitutional.  He is hunched down on the ground staring forward, tense in his body, as the sounds jangle both our nerves.  We stay rooted to the spot.  I’m trying to withstand the noise and find some semblance of peace, get to the quiet underneath.  I’m not sure what he’s trying to do.

Then Harley, the Australian shepherd puppy new to the apartment complex, comes out of the stairwell close to us.  Normally Nobiya and Harley are respectfully curious of one another.  But this time, Nobiya puffs up huge and screams at Harley, warning her off.

The Crows keep screaming too.

And still a hummingbird hovers over the highest reaches of the eucalyptus tree and darts in quickly for a sip of nectar, just feet away from the Crows, who completely ignore the tiny, swift, delicate bird, as they rock and caw back and forth, big and solid and black on lower, thicker branches.

It is January 5, 2018, and so far 2018 has been a year of action.  The natives are restless this morning.  Downright riled up by the sounds of it.

We don’t know what’s going to happen, but something is definitely up, and it is up to us to make it something we want, to make it good and light and powerful and happy.

On my Facebook feed, I see a post from YouTube of an Ivy League professor of political science talking about how the problem in American politics these days is the tone, how we treat those with whom we disagree with disdain, deepening the divide.

I am no stranger to disdain, both giving and receiving, like the crows. 

It’s time to get off my high horse and plant my feet on solid ground.

I tell Nobiya he is scaring Harley, that he knows Harley, that Harley is cool.  But he doesn’t listen.

Even once inside, he doesn’t calm down, but keeps yelling at the door, “Let me at ‘em!”

I tell him I have to go to work and pay for our home.

Don’t we all?