This I Believe

Footprint on the Moon (NASA Images)

It's now ten days into the new year. I know that this is a little late for the traditional stock-taking. The letting go of the past and starting fresh. At least theoretically.

Me, it seems I never let go of the past. The things I didn't understand get revisited and analyzed. Over and over again, until I understand them. Or think I do. Then I relish that bit of the past. It makes for good stories. Stories that help me more thoroughly understand, or, more often, understand differently.

Truth be told, I'm not much for letting go and starting fresh. I tend to let the day go and start again in the morning -- not "fresh" just start again where I left off.

For me, today's taking stock is an exploration of what I've come to believe.

This I believe:

I believe in and love People. Some of my best friends are people. We walk together and talk and laugh together. We worry together. But never in just the same way. We come from different countries. We've had very different growings-up. And very different adulthoods. Our politics are different. Some of us are faithfully religious. Some have our own faiths born of religion. And some have faith inspired by our experiences and educations. The one thing we have in common is that we all got to where we are by thoughtfully exploring our worlds and our lives. And we respect each other.

I believe in and love the Earth. It's my home. Its constancy reassures me. The Earth was here long before People and will be here long after us. Its atmosphere turns particles blown by solar winds into light shows. Its volcanoes burst full-flame into the night sky, building new lands. Tectonic plates shift and drift, forever changing Earth's face. Maybe not "alive" like mice and men, but Earth feels alive to me. And it sustains life.

I believe in and love Space. Space is the future of People and the Earth. From Space we can see Earth in its place in the Universe. How beautiful it is. How small. How much smaller are we. Earth, Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, is our birthplace in the Cosmos, where we have morphed from single-celled organism to sentient being. And now Earth is our staging ground.

Some of us have explored and colonized Earth's lands and waters until there is nowhere on Earth that we cannot go. Some of us will follow that explorer gene into Space. There will be new worlds, not to conquer, but to make new homes.

My middle name is not Pollyanna. I know there are difficulties among humans. There are Earth-borne catastrophes. There are dangers known and unknown in Space travel.

What I don't believe is that these negatives will be enough to stop us. We can and we will.

Into the Future!

Love, Marriage, and Taxes -- Creative Nonfiction

           

He used to do our taxes. Every year. You know how some people get really aggressive when they’re behind the wheel in city traffic? That’s the way he did taxes.

Back in those days a booklet would come in the mail along with the basic filing forms. The booklet, printed on roughish, beigish-grayish paper gave you current tax rules, listed the forms you needed and gave you the postal address of the nearest Internal Revenue Service Office processing tax returns. Ours had to be mailed to Austin, Texas. We had IRS offices in Oklahoma, but they never got the pleasure of processing annual tax returns. I’ve never been to Austin, but my tax returns have.

Some of the forms needed would be included in the booklet. Some not. You had to collect up all the forms necessary for your particular situation not included in the booklet. The post office and the public library kept them on hand “Free to the Public.”

He approached tax season as though preparing for battle. Not the assaulting side, you understand, but the side being assaulted. He would make a list of forms and send me to retrieve them. Any little hiccup in our daily life during that time was not only a personal affront but a shot across the bow.

Once the dryer quit working. We both worked full-time and had a toddler. Considering our income, he should have considered us lucky that he could fix it. Right then in the middle of tax season.

And there was the time I locked the keys in the car at the post office. The post office was thirty minutes away from home. He was a model of restraint and kindness, or at least silence, when he arrived with the spare key and took away the forms.

Each year there was a nontax-related disaster for him to overcome. And each year I would take the children away from the house while he prepared our tax returns. It was best that they not learn any new words that would get them in trouble at school.

Somewhere along the line I volunteered to take over tax duty. Somewhere along the line, tax preparation companies started making software available at a reasonable cost. Each year I am so grateful to them.

And each year I put it off to the last minute. Today is the deadline. I finished them yesterday. I’m always afraid it’s going to be too hard. I won’t be able to find all the information I’ll need. Somebody’s going to get sick and I’ll be too busy with them in the hospital. If I’m lucky, it’ll be me.

My computer will conk out. The internet will go down. There’ll be so many of us at the last minute that the IRS’s website will crash.

We’ll have to pay.

We won’t have enough money to pay and I’ll be arrested. I’m sensitive to tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplant. What kind of food do they serve in jail. It will be Federal Prison who knows where. There are Federal Prisons all over the country. I could end up in Kansas. I won’t know anyone there. Will they let me watch Downton Abbey?

After the appropriate number of sleepless nights, I did our taxes yesterday. He stayed away while I did them. In fact, he kept a low profile all last weekend, knowing that the end was near.

It wasn’t as difficult as I expected. The software has simple, easy to follow instructions and walked me through the process, step by step. It never has been as difficult as I imagined, but this could have been the year. And, HOORAY! We don’t have to pay. I won’t be going to prison anywhere. At least not this year.

He came home all smiles. He didn’t comment on the last-minute-ness of my tax work. He didn’t make any suggestions about how I could do it differently next year. He just brought me a present. A bottle of Riunite Lambrusco.

He remembered my favorite wine.

“I had trouble finding it.” he said. “I looked all over the store. It was on the bottom shelf. Guess that’s where they keep the cheap stuff.”

This I promise myself. I won’t wait until the last minute next year. I’ll put important documents and receipts away promptly – somewhere it makes sense so I will be able to find them. I’ll consider investing in one of those bookkeeping software programs. Next year I'll start as soon as I get my husband’s W2. Next year.

This year, I had a nice glass of  red wine with grilled chicken. It’s nice being married to someone who loves me and buys me cheap wine because I like it and won’t mention that you’re supposed to drink white wine with chicken.

K is for Kindness and L is for Love


     When you've been with someone for a long time, you begin to appreciate Kindness and know Love.
     Passion and Desire no longer color and cover everything. You begin to realize that he's never going to eat spaghetti. And he begins to accept that you are going to be a little late. The truth is no matter what he says or how loud he says it, you're still going to vote for that idiot. And no matter how reasonable you are he's still going to vote for anybody else.
     Then you have a weekend like we just had.
     Tuesday is the deadline for filing income tax returns in the United States, which is where we live. So last Friday, I loaded the software for this year and started ours. He kissed me and left the room. He did not ask what we were having for lunch or when. I guess he fixed his own lunch and ate when he wanted to. He didn't ask about dinner either. In fact, he didn't bother me about anything until after he signed the State Income Tax forms.
     Sunday he discovered that his aquarium had sprung a leak. His big aquarium. The one with the special fish, the particular gravel, the just-so acidic water, special snail shells sans snails, and the little rocks hand-glued to a plastic grid for a background. That one.
     Now my man is a quiet man. Out in public. And most of the time in private. But when things go wrong at home, it's easy to remember that his favorite movie -- well other than The Blues Brothers which he insists is not a musical -- is Christmas Story. And not because he relates with Ralphie, but because he admires the way the father does battle with their furnace and the Bumpus hounds.
     So, understanding the gravity of the aquarium situation, I made a one-time offer of help. He replied, "No." And I left the room.
     I stayed away until he asked me to come see how his second largest aquarium looked with its new residents. And we agreed that it was lucky he hadn't repopulated it. (It's been sitting and bubbling, all the while bereft of fish, for several months now.)
     The moral of this story is that sometimes leaving someone alone is a great Kindness and knowing when to do that is Love.