Oh Brother

Noted that all of my experience revolves around people.

My brothers are integral to my most vivid early childhood memories. Recently, my oldest brother Neil described the lament when they had to take me on their adventures.

"Do we have to take Barbara?" pointless question, obvious answer.

My recollections of my mother at this time are good, wonderful actually. She was frequently ill...bedridden, but this was our normal so at that time I didn't feel particularly one way or the other. I never questioned that she loved me, she just couldn't always keep her eye on me and that fell to my brothers. Ronny was my champion, Randy my competition, Rusty my responsibility, and Neil...was always the pretty one. I learned a good life from my interactions with all of them. Because of my brothers I don't take men too seriously. Their blow and spout just camouflages a sensitive spirit. (Ha! and this male fallacy we will explore in another experience.)

I only now realize how much they protected me, especially emotionally. I knew as long as I had at least one brother no harm could ever come to me. Because he was older and someone I had to catch-up with, Randy and I were competitive. Rusty was younger and someone I needed to protect...as I was protected. The oldest, Neil and Ronny, were to be obeyed. That was just how it was done, no doubt, no question. We all grew to embrace that we are our brothers’ keeper and we took it seriously. I am sad for people that do not share my experience with their own siblings. We were competitive with each other but never against each other.

My brothers were people I could count on without question...and I still do. Even my brother Rusty, whom I did not see for nearly 50 years, I know if I "really" called for him, he would come.

Over my lifetime the geographic estrangement and then the death of two of my brothers has been a blow as devastating as that of losing my grandpa. 

My grandfathers’ death taught me that life is finite and not to be taken for granted. It taught me about loss and the permanence of it and also the permanence of mistakes. Death taught me you cannot go back, from anything, you can only move forward. Ronny and Randy's death have left me incomplete and I will never be whole again. I will move forward, but not the person I might have been had they remained. But then really, isn't it all branches on a tree? I am not the person I might have been had I made different choices anywhere along the trunk. Maybe the person I am without them is good even without their back-up. Maybe having them for the time that I did taught me to survive, even thrive, without them. 

While this may be true, I don't have to like it. My brothers are whom I imagine when I hit a bad patch, imagine the advice they would offer, hear them whisper words of encouragement in my ear. Even if we are not together, my brothers are always on the back-burner to be stirred every now and again just to keep them from drying out. And this I will take with me to my own death, that's how important my brothers are to me.

Gifts From the Garden

Today from my organic garden I made beautiful chemical free jalapenos lightly grilled and then stuffed with cream cheese and bacon. 
Yummy!
I ate them all.
Parts of me are now on fire.
I may not survive...actually hope that I don't. 
Ice cream doesn't work.
Prayer isn't all that helpful either.

The Ring

She had the ring picked out before the man, too bad. She imagined it from the start, the first start. If she couldn’t be a cowboy then she would marry one and she twirled where cowboys gathered. At the time it seemed a reasonable plan.

The ring would be a simple 10mm band, 18k rose gold with his their brand embossed equidistant in five places. Husband, wife, two children and one more after they were married, just to seal the deal. Five equals, no more, no less, forever.

It couldn’t be a complicated brand or the sentiment might be lost in the heat of it. Nothing that would form a hot spot to scar when they punched it to the shoulder of a 3-month old calf. Something with a mill iron would be fine.

It should have been a Running W, but she was slack in his rodeo now. Still damn good fun at a ropin, or in the empty calving shed way up in the bluffs with no one but the eagle as witness. Fun is not for marrying, too bad. A fence crawler with two small children is worse than a breachy second calf heifer. No matter they were his calves she weaned, or what good hooks and pins she had. But the way she swung her rope…he would remember and calls her still, when he’s drinking.

Her brand would tuck inside the band, engraved, marked, scratched, branded, scarred, forever, this time.

She found him, a Lazy J mill iron. No hot spots there, none. Finding a herd sire isn’t difficult when all you’re looking for is a simple brand, and it only took the honeymoon for her to understand she had a two-hundred pound pizzle rot Lazy J mill iron bull-ringed through her Achilles tendon. The brand made it hard to swing her rope, so she quit tryin.

A Name For it

There isn’t a name for it, that thing when you make a memory, lifelong. She was 23 and pregnant. Just a girl walking up the stairs to sign a real estate contract with her first, soon-to-be-ex, husband. Just a man coming down the stairs, their hands sparked on the rail, a connection, a jolt to the system. Not her type, late 40-ish, drab Mister Rogers cardigan, penny loafers, scraggly moustache, prematurely graying hair with an unlit pipe clenched between uneven teeth. She was a pretty girl, but he looked past her pretty into “I know you, you are someone to me.” 

Their eyes met full, unembarrassed. Neither apologized, as is customary when you touch a stranger on a stairwell. Neither dropped their eyes or glanced away from invading personal space, like an invisible force field around modern society they stared directly into the eyes of not a stranger and fell instantly sad, ancient sad. What do you call it? Profound loss? and you have never met? never will? 

He turned to follow her up the stairs. Stopping at his office door to check his watch, fumble his moustache, watch them file into the room. She hung back slightly, the last inside, her eyes drifting again to his, just to be sure, to be sure. 

No, never, not ever. She was sure of it, so was he. They kept eyes to eyes until the attorney asked if she was feeling all right. “Could I get you some water?” “No, thank you.” Pulling her eyes away from not her type she went inside leaving the door wide.

            He followed their business with something like interest. Leaning back in his chair to put his feet on the desk he watched. She leaned forward laid her hand on the table and watched as two worlds revolved into an easy, familiar balance.

            He twiddled no particular thing at all until he thought to light the pipe. Good for at least five-minutes of ritual. He was new to pipe smoking, but not for long. He would think of her always when he smoked, on the golf course between drives, after making like to his wife, puttering in his orchids when he was older. His last thought would be of long black hair and unashamed eyes when she took his hand into eternity. He wondered why he knew her. Why he knew her so completely.

She thought of him when she went into labor, would have called out his name had she known it. Thought of him when she was baking cookies, planting carrots, folding laundry. She thought of him years later when she buried that child, would have cried out his name had she known it. Would cleave unto him had she known it.

“Missus? Missus? Are you all right? Can I get you something? Is it the baby?” She should pay attention, but she couldn’t, the room felt airless and uncomfortably tight.

“Pregnant women, friggin’ weird,” the attorney thought. “It’s the hormones,” the attorney thought. But he was wrong. Not hormones, the light and dark, good and evil, yin and yang, man and woman of it.

When she left the room he followed her as far as the bank of glass at the top of the stairs. He watched her walk down and look up as she swung slowly around the newel. He counted her steps through the building until she came into view in the parking lot. She stared long at him before crawling inside the car. He watched them pull away, watched her fingertips press the car window as his own pressed the glass. They watched until there was nothing left to see.

Keeping Fit

Cookie Blues. Goes without saying...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o2LszjrHnA&NR=1

Should Genetically Engineered Food Be Labeled?

            It is safe to say that most Americans want to believe that what they are consuming is truly what they are consuming. To that end, the concerns and necessity surrounding food labeling began in 1977 when products containing the artificial sweetener, saccharin, were required to have a label informing the consumer of the potential adverse health effects of saccharin consumption (USFDA, 2009, a.). This legislation did not restrict the use of saccharin, but it did alert the consumer to the “potential” for deleterious health effects, not unlike alcohol and cigarette packages of today.

In 1990 the USFDA enacted the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act further requiring all packaged foods to follow standardized terms for content and health claims. Additionally, supplementary changes to labeling and standardization of terminology have been added to products with known or suspect allergenic reactions such as, latex, certain plastics, peanuts, shellfish, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) (USFDA, 2011). Tweaks to the labeling system are current and ongoing in an attempt to best inform Americans about the products that they consume.

Therefore, given America’s legislative tradition of full disclosure regarding product content, it is not unreasonable to expect that a product or commodity containing genetically engineered (GE) material would be labeled as such. This allows the consumer to consume or not consume based on personal choice. Like alcohol or cigarette packages, this does not impose a governmental opinion, but serves only to provide a “heads-up”. This “heads-up” approach has the bio-tech industry screaming foul and the truth in advertising population screaming fair. Not surprisingly, money is at the root of this controversy.

Bio-tech advocates rely on support from “substantial equivalence” (USFDA, 1992), essentially that GE food and feed products are almost exactly the same as naturally occurring products (USFDA, 2009, b.). Further, citing an unnecessary—but unsupported—claim that the resulting substantial increases in product costs will impact not only non–consumers of GE products, but all consumers (Byrne, 2010). In a research study at Colorado State University’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, a series of surveys specifically targeted at potatoes were undertaken to understand Colorado-consumer attitudes toward GE foods. The survey of 437 supermarket shoppers in four Front Range communities in the Fall of 2000 found that 78 percent supported mandatory labeling of GE foods (Byrne, 2010). Further surveys, studies, analyses, and prognostications all dependent on the tenuous hold of substantial equivalency lead us to believe that consumers are not willing to pay for labeling (Byrne, 2010), but more than a decade after CSU’s potato survey, informed consumers worldwide are still fighting for GE labeling (FSANZ, 2011). 

Clearly, after more than ten years of embittered battling between industry and consumers, Americans join the ranks of citizens worldwide that want to know a product contains, or is, GE and are willing to pay to fight for that right.

References

Byrne, P. (9/2010). Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods. Colorado State University; Extension. No. 9.371. Retrieved 27 February 2011 from

            http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09371.html

FSANZ. (2011). Genetically Modified Foods (GM). Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Retrieved 26 February 2011 from

            http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumerinformation/gmfoods/  

USFDA. (2011). Labeling & Nutrition.

            http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/default.htm

USFDA. (2009, a.). Milestones in Food and Drug Law.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/Milestones/ucm081229.htm

USFDA. (2009, b.). Plant Biotechnology for Food and Feed

            http://www.fda.gov/Food/Biotechnology/default.htm

USFDA. (1992). Statement of Policy – Foods Derived From New Plant Varieties

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/GuidanceDocuments/Biotechnology/ucm096095.htm

Caveat Lector

Today is about loss.
If that is a bummer for you, stop now and go do something productive. Preferably with chocolate.

...I can't write this yet.

Some hours later...

I opted to read about gain and ignore the losses I have tallied up on my score-card of life.
Not to forget the lesson that loss teaches, I just don't want to drag them behind me anymore.
So I don't, almost don't.

Currently, I hear my youngest call from the bathtub. No doubt summoning me to fetch the towel that she chooses to forget. Of all my children she is the most imp-like. My friend calls her a buzz saw. An accurate description, but chipper/shredder might be more accurate.

Her attitude says, "I have needs and you will meet them." And so of course, I do.
This attitude is for me alone. Our unique mother-daughter bond.

She has her reasons that are not a mystery to my family. To the world she is a puzzle of painfully shy, emotionally cripplingly, downright rudeness. It is a sensory overload that hopefully time will cure, or maybe not.

When people realize this they try and draw her out, which only serves to push her more tightly in.

She can't bear to be touched. Now that she is older she knows that this is rude and will stand stock still to almost tolerate a hug from an acquaintance, but it requires monumental effort.
I will pay for this because sometimes I am not her buffer.
I am the mother, I should fend and interpret for her---her eyes tell me, and frequently I do. But she has to make her own way eventually and baby steps are good.

At our house good is subjective. Many things that are mundane, odd, or downright unusual are good, real good.

Last year we had pneumonia together, she and I. We went to the emergency room. 
The intake Doc came into--intake. He looked at my chart and looked at her chart and then at us.

"You are the..."(looks at charts again--and again) "you are the mother?"

"That's correct."

Looks at charts, knits brow.
"You are 57 and your daughter is...6?"

"Correct, again."

I have, as the whim strikes me, spun the yarn of fertility drugs, late in life pregnancy, and breast feeding without having to lift my child up off of my lap, but I was too sick for my old bag-of-tricks and he chose not to pursue his.
Sadly, another laugh lost.

I love her for all of her twisting of my tail because she mostly makes me laugh at that giant attitude.
Her bad attitude is my great guffaw.