Follow the Senior Hummingbird

If I had the chance to be reincarnated, I’d only agree if I could come back as a dancer.  I felt intuitively that’s what I wanted to be the very first time I accompanied my friend to her ballet class when we were in elementary school.  I literally drooled watching the class.  But my parents didn’t have much money and didn’t think it was a good investment.  So, I just continued to go with her as a disappointed observer.  What I lacked besides lessons was any talent for dancing, and I’ve remained mainly an appreciator – with the exception of eventually taking Belly Dance lessons as a 30 year old and then the Joy of Dance when I was in my late 50s and my teacher was 89.

My first “real” job was after school in high school at the Publicity Department of a lumber company.  What I remember most is riding my bike to work and having a crush on the guy who knew just how to make the folding machine work perfectly.  In college, I worked in our library.  I had a short stint as a secretary in a stamp collecting company and couldn’t believe how excited people got over stamps.  The job I was waiting for was a civil service position as a social worker in foster care.  Nothing in my education or life prepared me for that, but the pay was great ($5,000 a year!) and I had a husband studying in graduate school.

With a break of 10 years to be a stay-at-home mom, my social work jobs in foster care, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (Welfare), designer and coordinator of  The Volunteer Center at a Mental Health clinic, and a Community Educator for a Battered Women’s Program gave me a profound introduction to life as I had (thankfully) never personally experienced it.  The jobs were gut-wrenching, intense, eye-opening, and depressing – even after I achieved a Master’s in Social Work and had some educational training.  In truth, I was overwhelmed and wasn’t a very good social worker.  But it added many dimensions to my knowledge of people.

Then, I set out to know the world widely and culturally.  Having a Master’s in Social Work enabled me to enter Israel as a new immigrant in a training program for American social workers.  The program put me into an internship in child abuse and neglect.  But once on my own, and ever since then, work and play have mingled interestingly and happily.  Although I was not particularly good at it, I was a housemother in an Israeli boarding school to newly arrived Ethiopian teenage boys.  Everything was new. Working in the Hebrew language, living with very religious Jews, and absorbing the cultures of both Israel and Ethiopia at one time were not easy challenges, but endlessly fascinating.

My next job was with a program called Interns for Peace where Jews and Arabs worked together to promote peaceful coexistence.  The challenges were enormous, but enabled me to live as the solitary Jew among 35,000 Arabs in the Israeli-Arab town of Shefaram.  And that was where I first tried out being a teacher by having after school English clubs in the Shefaram Community Center.  I was beginning to find my true job niche.

When I went to China in 1988, I decided to use teaching as a tool to get to know the Chinese culture.  I literally knocked on doors in Hangzhou, China, and said, “Hi, I’d like to teach English.”  Once invited to be a teacher in a small tourism school, it was clear I had found the job I was good at — teaching English to non-native English speakers.  And I have remained a teacher since then, living in China, Taiwan, Macau, Bali, and Korea.  Once back in the U.S., I headed for the local community colleges to teach adult ESL students.

It was an unusual life, and an unusual career that remained a joy.  What it didn’t have was promotions, benefits, and pensions.  Now that I’m 67, I’m more aware of that than ever.  However, I feel fortunate that, for most of my working life, I loved my jobs.

I went to a concert today that was uplifting.  The young musicians were friends, extremely talented in playing and composing, and obviously enjoyed what they were doing.  One of the violinists had been a child prodigy and first played in our community at the tender age of 9.   She made a comment about how she didn’t have any friends as a child because she was always practicing, but now in adulthood, she had many friends — musicians like herself.  Yes, there can be sacrifices along the way before your work and play become one.

I keep a quote on my bathroom mirror that our yoga teacher passed out one day.  It says, “The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him, he is always doing both.”

I lost my balance this summer. The first whammy that knocked me off my balance was when I fainted and was hospitalized twice in one week. I’ve now read my medical records and it’s still difficult to determine what my body was reacting to. Part was dehydration, but many of my numbers — blood pressure, blood counts, cholesterol — went in unusual directions, weirdly even including healthier than “my normal.” My body seemed to eventually right itself back to “my normal,” but not before I had endured many unnecessary, expensive tests, was weakened by a strong antibiotic that it turns out I didn’t need after all, and discomforting memories of a very unpleasant time in the hospital. The problems passed, but the high expense and that very disquieting feeling of vulnerability in the hospital will remain.
While I was in the hospital, my 1993 Oldsmobile inherited from my dad decided that we finally needed to part. The leak under it declared it needed a new transmission. At a cost of $2,000, that didn’t make sense. So, I’m now trying to negotiate our bus system, taxis, and occasionally relying on friends to get around. The lack of independence that I felt with a car that allowed me to zip hither and thither at my whim is what’s hard to get used to. But I probably won’t buy another car. The expense in owning a car, busier roads, gas at over $3.00 a gallon, deteriorating eyesight and reaction times all deter me.
Following quickly upon the death of my car was the collapse of my computer. I put $100 into trying to revive it, but I had to accept that five years in the hands of someone who loved it, but never quite understood it, aged it beyond help. So, I am now dizzily riding the treacherous learning curve of a new computer that knows so much more than I do.
Yes, change is good. I loved the constant challenge of change when I was traveling from place to place, culture to culture. However, the rapid succession of changes I experienced this summer are not exhilarating and refreshing. Rather, they must be endured and overcome.
My time in Asia gave me an appreciation of the concept of balance in body and mind. I fell out of balance this summer and am trying to right myself.

From my perspective of having been a woman solo traveler, the hype around the book, “Eat, Pray, Love,” the movie, the memorabilia for sale, and even Eat, Pray, Love tours has taken me by surprise. Do that many middle-aged woman really want to leave their present lives and set out with a backpack for an extended voyage of personal discovery?
Most of my girlfriends were more horrified than envious when I left a nice upper-middle-class life and my roles as wife and mother and, at the age of 40, set out in 1983 with a one-way ticket on an open-ended world-wide journey that lasted, in fact, over 16 years.
I purposely set out for places I knew either nothing or little about — Israel, China, Taiwan, Macau, Bali, and Korea. I didn’t know what I expected to find, and that was the compelling part. Like Liz Gilbert in “Eat, Pray, Love,” I was driven by unfulfilled parts within me that pushed me out of the known, the comfortable, the predictable. I kept journals and eventually put them into “Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird.”
Women who read my book or learn of my wandering life usually say that I was very brave to venture alone “out there” without a support system, without much money, without knowing the languages of the countries I lived in. In my way of thinking, one is brave if she does something she’s afraid of. However, I didn’t feel afraid or lonely. I intuitively adapted to such an unusual life and found it so fascinating that I continued from middle-age until I was no longer middle-aged and my elderly parents needed my presence in the U.S. I learned I was a sculptor of sorts who could carve out niches for myself wherever I went. I had a talent for building bridges with the cultures I lived within. I met colorful characters and friendly people, many of whom remain my friends to this day. Like Liz, I healed as much as I could from the pain I’d caused and the guilt of leaving loved ones behind. And I had to admit I didn’t regret my decisions.
Is extended solo travel always a life-changing event as it was for Liz Gilbert and as it was for me? You may find love and riches beyond your wildest imagination like Liz did. You may find fulfillment and joy in independence as I did. Or you may discover you are overjoyed to return to the known, the comfortable, and the predictable.

I lay on my back looking out upon the clear night sky of Idyllwild, California, under the Perseus meteor shower. This has become my annual birthday celebration with a friend who shares the same birthday time and a love of shooting stars.
Under the splendor of the Milky Way and the constellations, we scan the sky for shooting stars and question heavenly sights we do not understand. What is that bright, fast moving light that suddenly disappears?
Often, but not always, we both see the shooting star going out in it’s final blaze of glory and we call out its number of the night. Between 10 p.m. and midnight the first night, we counted ten. The second night, 26, and the third night 40. One spectacular sighting that my friend saw, but I missed, were closely parallel shooting stars. But we both saw the best birthday gift — one loooong, slow, bright explosion arcing all across our view of the sky. It was the quintessential perfect shooting star!
Being out there under the magnificence of the heaven always brings me a sense of wonder, humility, and the assurance that I’m a part of nature, albeit an infinitesimal part.
Back home again, I walked to a nearby spring where I like to sit in a tree and contemplate. Needless to say, I don’t have to climb up very high to sit in a comfortable, convenient spot. This is not just a tree — it has a very long history dating back to its youth when the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. I can sense its age and power and wisdom when I sit in it, hug one of its many trunks, and look up to the leafy branches that seem to offer directions my life could go in.
Aliso Creek, although not a truly clean creek, meanders close by. It attracts ducks, egrets, and lots of tadpoles. Tall reeds and stately pussy willows sometimes choke the flow of the water. But there is always a beautiful, colorful reflection of the surrounding rocks in a part of the creek that always pools nicely.
I’ve been watching this creek for 11 years now, noting the changes I’ve seen in it. This time, I saw a log that had been dragged across a narrow part. Although some water could go under it, a brown sludge was building up behind it, strangling the flow.
Although the log was heavy, I pulled it away. Immediately, the sludge on the top broke apart as the water surged through it. The natural flow of the water was restored, reminding me of how I broke through obstacles in my life so I, too, could flow naturally.

It wasn’t easy buying a car when I was an immigrant in Israel. For some reason, new cars were not being ordered at that time, so I couldn’t make choices such as color and amenities. I bought an Opel that was available on the floor. My parents had come to visit me for the first time since I’d moved to Israel, and carried in $8,000 in cash from my savings.
Immigrants were allowed to purchase ONE car in their lifetime for 50% tax. Israelis paid about 200% tax when they purchased a car. For five years, the immigrant and the state of Israel owned the car jointly, meaning that it could not be sold without paying the extra taxes that had been earlier avoided. Most new immigrants at that time bought one nice car, sold it 5 years or more later without paying additional taxes, and bought a new small car.
Although I didn’t look forward to the roads filled with nervous, easily-agitated Israeli drivers, I did love my green car. I even named it proudly — Magic Carpet Leaf. For three years, I managed somehow to avoid having a car accident in that very accident-prone country.
In 1988, I was living in the Arab Israeli town of Shefaram in the Galilee area while working for a program that promoted co-existence between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. The Jews who worked in the program lived in Arab villages. The population of Shefaram at that time was about 35,000 Moslem, Christian, and Druse Arabs and one Jew — me.
On February 18, 1988, there was a cold, calculated murder in Shefaram! My wonderful Magic Carpet Leaf was bombed. I slept through the time gas was poured over the front tires and ignited. I slept through the fire department putting out the fire. And then my neighbors came to wake me and tell me what had happened. We saved some things from the trunk, somewhat the worse for wear and reeking of smoke.
Amidst the confusion of the policemen, the firemen, and neighbors telling me not to cry, a little dog I had befriended and named Pancho suddenly appeared in the dark night. I ran and picked him up and held him close.
Later that night, I walked outside in the early morning — too early for people to be around — so that I could grieve and have a funeral for Magic Carpet Leaf. The pretty green of the back of the car made such a sad contrast to the ugly blackened front of the car. As I had often done, I talked to it and expressed my gratitude for having kept me safe for the three years.
In the misty early morning, I hugged as much of its wet, cold metal as I could get my hands and arms around. I cried over it, thanked it, apologized to it, and bid it farewell. Pancho was there too. He sensed that I was upset and stood loyally by my side for comfort.

For someone who never truly enjoyed driving and spent many years living as a nomad without a car, I still had strong relationships with each of my cars. Upon the recent death of my last car, I remember other cars I loved.

It took me a long time to even be able to drive a used Ford Ranger pick-up truck that my husband and I bought for a camping trip to Alaska in 1969. It was a stick shift and I had previously only driven an automatic. It had a low camper shell over the bed of the truck, which my husband cleverly converted into a cozy place to sleep and efficiently store our stuff. Even though you couldn’t stand up in it, it made a great home for our 7 weeks from California up to and along the Alcan (Alaska/Canada) Highway, using the guidebook, “The Milepost.” We had intended to sell the truck after we got home, but couldn’t part with it.

My husband, son, and I spent many happy years camping in that truck.  One of my favorite pictures is of us on our way up to Friday Harbor, Washington, where my husband did research at the Labs there in the summer.  Our strong black truck with the white camper shell and the bright red canoe tied upside down on the top stands  waiting expectantly for the upcoming camping adventures.

It was the truck that I chose to keep when my husband and I divorced. It seemed a more practical choice for my move to New Orleans, and it turned out to be even more useful than I expected. I went back to school to get a Master’s of Social Work degree while I was in Louisiana. I lived and did my field practice in New Orleans, but had to be at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (a few hours away) for classes two consecutive days a week. Hmmm! Where could I stay cheaply overnight?
I solved the problem with my trusty truck. Already outfitted for sleeping and storage, I discovered a motel on the campus that was open all night, allowing access to the restrooms. For some reason, a large number of police cars were usually parked in that motel parking lot, which gave me at least the illusion of safety. I swam in the gym pool after classes, which also gave me a chance for a good shower. And I studied in the campus library until it closed. Then, I curled up comfortably in my sleeping bag in the truck. I ended every stay on campus with a magnificent bowl of gumbo or jambalaya in the university cafeteria. It worked out very well for the two years I had to do it. And I was very grateful for the home the truck provided.
When I was leaving the U.S. and had to sell my friend, the truck, I cried as it went down the road without me.
Magic Carpet Leaf was my dear car when I was an immigrant in Israel. Its end was very dramatic. But that’s a story I’ll leave for my next post.

While I am putting my health back together, other things in my life are falling apart at a rapid rate. There is my car – a 1993 Oldsmobile I inherited from my dad in 1999. So, we’ve been together a long time.
I truly felt this car was my friend as well as a machine. That may sound odd, but I distinctly remember a book I read about living on Antarctica that fascinated me with its description of the very special relationship that certain workers there had with the machines that existed to keep them alive. That made sense to me. Although I don’t have the skill of a mechanic or understand how machines work, I loved my car and felt it protected me. Whenever it had a problem with the tires, brake, etc., it never endangered me. Most recently, I was driving the car twice only 15 minutes from when I fainted away from dehydration. If I had been driving at that time…well, the consequences would have had to be even more of a calamity. Safely parked in my carport while I was in the hospital, fluids leaked out from various places. Even though I was eventually assured my fainting was from dehydration and not something that would happen again, I was adjusting to the idea of not driving for awhile.
In fact, I have become more and more a skittish driver as I’ve aged. I stopped driving the freeways, and didn’t like going places I didn’t know well. I also knew my night vision was deteriorating.
It will be a definite harsh adjustment to life without driving permanently. But, in our retirement community, we have an internal bus system that augments the public bus system. And through a subsidized program for seniors, I can ride the taxi for half fare. It will have to do until I can decide whether or not to get a golf cart, or possibly a motorized three wheel tricycle.
The very day my car was towed to the garage to assess its problem, my trusty computer fell ill too. It was the first computer I bought in 2005 in order to write my book. I’m not sure yet whether or not it’s terminally ill, but I’ll have to make a decision about it. Either way, fixing it or getting a new one, will cost a lot of money at a time I’m being hit with other extra expenses, including my hospitalizations.
And today, my phone took several voice mail messages without ringing. Hmmm! Is my phone dying too?
It’s a strange time! I wonder what tomorrow will bring. Fortunately, even though I felt I was dying just a few short weeks ago, my natural health is re-asserting itself as other things in my life continue to fall apart and die.

Feeling like I was dying makes me look more closely at life again. I can feel myself coming alive again after my ordeal began on July 9. I’m still weak, but it’s good to feel my natural health reasserting itself after such a low point.
Although I attribute a lot of my ordeal to medical care run amok, my friend is right in saying that I have rarely been sick so that was part of my suffering. It’s always been true that I get depressed when I don’t feel well. My whole world turns gray. But I’d never been this sick before. Looking back when I truly felt I was dying in the hospital, I was quite calm. I felt my affairs were in order, I mentally sent goodbye messages to the close friends I believed I’d never talk to again, and I definitely smiled when I thought I wouldn’t outlive my meager retirement savings. I have lived a good life that includes accomplishments, adventures, and self-fulfillment.
My anger at the medical care I received was one sign that I was beginning to feel better. I have always championed fairness and reasonableness, so the incompetence of my doctors appalled me. However, I have long distrusted modern medical care and have intentionally stayed only on the fringes of it. My recent experience only strengthened that distrust.
Although I can’t yet describe it, I feel I have changed with the past weeks. I was definitely heartened and grateful for the warm cocoon that my friends and neighbors wove around me during the last weeks.
As my health and strength flows back, I look forward to what may remain in my life’s journey to follow. Will I change parts of my life? Which parts will I re-examine, re-explore, take on, or give up? I can’t tell yet, but I do know that there is more than a touch of luck that pulled me through.

Once again, I was overjoyed to be in my own home again after three more days in the hospital. Dr. W., the infectious disease doctor,  gave me a prescription to continue the antibiotic, Doxycycline, for seven more days at home. I also knew that I’d need to take probiotics to prevent my tongue from developing thrush in the wake of the antibiotic sweeping my body clean of EVERY bacteria, good and bad.
Already weak, instead of getting better, I felt worse and worse. The antibiotic drained every ounce of energy from me during its 12-hour cycles. My friends and neighbors were wonderful bright spots who brought me food, did my laundry, and tried to keep up my spirits. But I got paler and paler and felt worse and worse every day.
With three days left of the antibiotic, I called the infectious disease doctor just for reassurance that I needed to be feeling this bad. When he called back, he blithely said, “Your tests show no reason for you to be taking the antibiotic, so you can stop.” He had never said he was giving the antibiotic to me as a preventive measure because of the tick bite. I had believed there was a good reason for me to be taking it. But the fact that he had no intention of calling me to tell me I didn’t need more of the antibiotic left me speechless. Could he have so little idea of what the drugs he prescribed did to people? When I asked him why I fainted, he said he didn’t know, but perhaps I had had a virus — just what I had suspected and had tried to tell the doctors after the second time I fainted.
Once off the antibiotics, my body finally and slowly started its recovery. I’ll never quite be the same after this gruesome experience. I, who had never really trusted doctors, hospitals, and drugs, lost any lingering confidence I might have had in medical care. And the bill for these two hospitalizations that amounted to 4 days — $40,000!! All those unnecessary tests — CT Scan, MRI, EEG (a brain wave exam) added up to thousands. The food I couldn’t eat and those miserable sleepless nights in the hospital were charged at over $3,000 a day.
I don’t know what my Secure Horizons medicare plan will actually pay the hospital since they negotiate the price in the big Medicare game. I, however, must pay for two hospital admissions and two emergency room fees which amounts to $900. That’s a lot of money in my meager retirement budget, but way more than I think my care was worth.
It was more than an ordeal. This time, I survived.

It is ironic that hospital patients all need to sleep well, but it’s quite impossible to sleep well or long at night in the hospital.
My roommate’s huge family gathered around her at night. I’m not sure which language they were speaking, but they spoke a lot of it — and not very quietly. When they weren’t with her, she had two phones that kept ringing loudly and constantly. Another sound that rang often was a warning when she wasn’t breathing well. The sound was like an angry, insistent alarm clock. I called a nurse several times saying that someone needed to check on my roommate. Finally, someone came in and said that, since we were being monitored on screens, they didn’t need to have her machine so audible. One sleepless night for me.
The second night, my roommate had, if possible, even more family members noisily gathered around her. The number of visitors swelled as her condition worsened during the night. I’m sure her body had to be very confused with all the medication I had heard the nurse giving her. The warning bells and worried voices of family members escalated as she went into a crisis and a Rapid Response Team was called to assess her condition. The curtains couldn’t contain all the people gathered on her side of the room. She was taken to Intensive Care.
A kind nurse gave me a pair of blessed ear plugs, and with the other side of the room empty, I fell into my first deep sleep. I was unwillingly pulled out of my sleep by another explosion of sounds. I was dragged back to consciousness. Yet another person had been put into my room and this person was also attended by multiple loud family members and warning bells. Another sleepless night!
The nurse felt so sorry for me that she actually called the hospital social services the next day and asked them to apologize to me for two very loud, sleepless nights. To emphasize their apology for my discomfort, the lady gave me a $5 Starbucks gift card!! But I was totally exhausted.
My next hospitalist, Dr. A., dropped by a couple of times for literally a couple of seconds and said nothing to me. I pleaded with the nurse to remind Dr. A. that I had recently been in a different part of the country, had had a tick bite, and felt like I had a virus because my stomach felt strange and I wasn’t able to swallow any food. Her oft-repeated response to me was that I was far too anxious about my condition and should just calm down and let the doctors figure out what was happening to me. I definitely found her more patronizing than comforting. But she did get special permission from Dr. A. to give me Ensure with each meal since I wasn’t able to eat.
And suddenly a pretty, petite prophet with a dangling curl appeared next to my bed. She introduced herself as Dr. F., a fainting specialist who had just returned from maternity leave. She patiently listened to everything I described about my condition. And then she said, “You will not faint again. You will be fine. You will be able to go back to your activities.” I basked in the positivity in her voice. I also asked about the Cat Scan and MRI I’d had and she smiled and said assuredly they would show nothing because they had nothing to do with my fainting. She also noticed my dry mouth and said I was still dehydrated.
She then summoned an infectious disease doctor whose bland, almost wordless personality, was a stark contrast to her quiet animation. He looked at my hands and, from what I remember, acknowledged my earlier backache and headache as symptoms of my tick bite even though I never had the traditional symptoms of fever and rash of the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. He started me on two intravenous doses of the very strong antibiotic, Doxycycline.
That night, a neurology specialist sent by my primary care physician visited me and said he would like to do a lumbar puncture the following morning to rule out meningitis. When I asked the side effects of the test, he said I could possibly have a headache for a week or so. I said incredulously, “After yet another sleepless night I expect tonight, you want to come at 7:30 a.m. and do a test that I’ve heard is very painful and will give me headaches for possibly a week. I’ll have to think about it.” That night, the most efficient nurse of all the ones I’d had, printed out information about lumbar punctures for me to make an informed decision. That decision was a definite NO since I already felt I’d had too many tests without enough evidence of needing them.
Although I got a new roommate that night, it was quieter and her few visitors kept their voices low. What I didn’t know then was that the worst was still to come.

To Be Continued…