Tag: change

JC’s Confessions #31

In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.

On April 6, 2025, Pope Francis appeared in public for the first time after returning home from his long hospitalization. It was at the end of a special Jubilee liturgy for the sick and health care workers and others who care for them. He had written the homily and a special blessing for the mass, although they were read by others. Francis wrote:

In this moment of my life I share a lot: the experience of infirmity, feeling weak, depending on the others for many things, needing support. It is not easy, but it is a school in which we learn every day to love and to let ourselves be loved, without demanding and without rejecting, without regretting, without despairing, grateful to God and to our brothers for the good that we receieve, trusting for what is still to come.

I am currently entering the second year of dealing with a complex medical situation that has not yet been fully diagnosed. I don’t know if I will be able to be adequately treated or if I will continue to see progression in my symptoms.

It’s hard.

I confess that I am not always gracious in this situation. I manage to let others do things for me and to ask for accommodations if I need them, but I find it difficult to set aside regret and to trust in the future.

This is especially hard for me in regard to my future as a poet. I don’t know if I will regain the creativity I’ve lost to brain fog and fatigue. I’m even losing the concentration and attention to detail needed to do submissions for my already existing poems and manuscripts.

I’m trying not to get to the point of despair.

These next few weeks are important in that I have a new batch of tests and specialist visits coming up.

Maybe having some more information about what is happening will help me to be better with being sick.

Maybe not.

I’ll try.

(I realized when I went back in my blog to find the number confession this was that this confession is, in a way, a continuation of #30.)

in transition

Just a quick note that I am working on re-configuring my author site and blog.

I’m in a bit of a tangle with WordPress support in how to actually implement what I thought I had done when I acquired joannecorey.com as my custom domain last September.

For now, please note that what had been the main menu items for Top of JC’s Mind are now in a drop-down menu. I’m not a fan of drop-down menus but I haven’t yet figured out how to retain the prior look of topofjcsmind.wordpress.com under the joannecorey.com domain.

If I can’t figure it out, you may have to put up with some more finagling in the coming days. I’m hoping not to have to change my theme because it suits me and is, I think, easy to read.

Stay tuned…

belated poetry

2023 Binghamton Poetry Project anthology

This spring is the tenth anniversary of my involvement with the Binghamton Poetry Project, which offers workshops to the area community, let by graduate students at Binghamton University.

Today, I’m sharing the link to the 2023 online anthology which became available at some point over these last weeks. Usually, an anthology release coincided with our final readings at the end of the spring and fall sessions, but, last year, for various reasons, no anthologies were published at those times. The link above has three poems from the spring 2023 workshops; I had submitted three from the fall, but they appear to have evaporated into cyberspace.

My poems, “With Nana” “After Cataract Surgery” and “The Way Home”, were written from prompts from our workshop leaders. “After Cataract Surgery” is closest to “real life”; the other two are more imagined. They were written and revised quickly because I needed to make the original anthology deadline, so no judgement on the level of editing!

A transition is underway with Binghamton Poetry Project which is now being re-named the Binghamton Writers Project. The plan is to offer community workshops in other literary genres in addition to poetry. Right now, we are still waiting to see what that will look like.

I owe a lot to the Binghamton Poetry Project. I’ve learned a lot about craft from their workshops. BPP connections helped me find the Grapevine Poets, with whom I workshop on a regular basis year-round and participate in readings. I was invited to write and deliver a poem at the Broome County Heart of the Arts dinner in 2016. A number of poems in my chapbook Hearts and in my still unpublished full-length collection began as Binghamton Poetry Project prompts.

I’m hoping (selfishly) that the Binghamton Writers Project will always keep a poetry offering available.

I wonder how long it will take me to stop calling it the Binghamton Poetry Project or BPP?

SoCS: a hometown tale

Once upon a time, I lived in a town of about 200 people in western Massachusetts. Well, 200 if you counted the people in the prison camp up on the hill, who lived in what had been built as lodgings for CCC workers back in ’30s. When I was in Girl Scouts, we used to go to the camp for lessons in ceramics and jewelry making and such. My daughter has a tooled leather belt that my sister made there. The crafts kept the prisoners occupied and they sold some beautiful pieces in their gift shop.

We had a grammar school in town. Four grades in one room downstairs and the four older grades in a classroom upstairs. The school was also built in the ’30s by the WPA. Jobs that helped workers during the Depression and that helped the town for decades after. My father lived in town then and was in school when they moved to the new building.

The largest employer in town was a paper mill along the river which made specialty papers, like the glassine that used to cover envelope windows before there were plastics. They used to make the wrappers for Necco wafers; I remember seeing them made on a school field trip to the mill.

Life was good. Everyone knew everyone. We were probably a bit behind the times but no one much cared about that.

Greater forces did impact us over time, though.

Jobs were moving South. The owners of the mill closed it. Some jobs and the people that filled them moved to Georgia. Some other folks found jobs locally, although other towns were also losing their mills, so jobs weren’t easy to come by. Even the prison camp closed.

The town got smaller. When there were only seven kids left in town who were in K-8, the school closed and the students were bussed to a neighboring town. Eventually, even the post office closed.

The town is still there, though. The people are resilient. Everyone knows everyone. They recently celebrated the town’s bicentennial.

And they all lived happily ever after.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to begin with “Once upon a time.” I chose to end this (mostly) true tale with the classic fairy tale ending. Join us for SoCS and/or Just Jot It January! Details here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/01/13/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2023-daily-prompt-jan-14th/

A normal-rare event

On July tenth, there was a rare island of normalcy.

Or an almost normal version of a rare event.

I participated in a live poetry reading in conjunction with the Empty the Inkpots exhibit at the Vestal Museum. The reading was part of the Summer Art Festival, a collaboration of the Museum and the Vestal Public Library. Several of the poets from the Binghamton Poetry Project who have work included in Empty the Inkpots read from the stage/deck at the Museum with the audience arrayed in scattered chairs and benches and on the lawn. It was the first time in many months that I have participated in a live-and-in-person poetry reading. It had been even longer since I had had to read with a microphone. The amplification was useful because the museum is near a busy roadway.

I chose not to read the poem I had on display, which is about the early months of the pandemic; it is available at the link above. Instead, I read three poems from my manuscript about the North Adams, Massachusetts where I grew up. “Conveyance” appeared in the spring 2021 anthology of the Binghamton Poetry Project. The other two poems, “North Adams Public Library” and “Monroe Bridge Mail”, are currently unpublished so I won’t share them here.

I was very happy with the reading on a number of counts. First, there were people in the audience who came at my invitation, including one who saw my Facebook announcement of the event. Second, though I was nervous before, I was reasonably comfortable during the reading, even managing the microphone adjustment without much trouble. Third, the reading was well-appreciated by our audience. We had six poets, with diverse styles and viewpoints, represented. We read in alphabetical order. Uncharacteristically, I was not first, which was helpful for me. I like to read early in the order, but I’m better at reading second than first. I was also grateful that the most experienced poet and performer was last as it gave a strong finish to event. No one should have to follow J. Barrett Wolf at a reading!

Lastly, I was pleased to receive personal compliments after the reading from family and friends, some of whom are also poets. What was most heart-warming was that a woman that I did not know came up to me afterward and told me how much she enjoyed my poems and asked where she could find my work. Of course, I don’t have any books of my own out, but I was able to give her my paper copies of my poems, which included my bio for the exhibit and the address for Top of JC’s Mind.

The reading was an island of normalcy not only because of the pandemic but also because most of my time these days has been wrapped up in dealing with the care of my 96-year-old dad who is currently in a rehab/skilled nursing facility after a fall and ensuing complications. It’s why it has taken me so long to post about the reading.

It’s also why, for the first time in years, I am not registered for the current sessions of the Binghamton Poetry Project. I am usually visiting my father in the early evenings. Even if another family member is available to visit, I can’t predict if I will have any creativity/brainpower left late in the day.

It’s made the reading that much more important as a reminder that my poetry life is still there, waiting for me to go back to it when things are more settled.

Someday.

SoCS: going out for a drive

One of the changes with the rules in New York State and with my father’s assisted living home is that I can now sign him out and take him for a drive. Previously, I could only take him to medical appointments.

My father, who is known here as Paco, loved to drive. He drove quite a bit when he worked for New England Power Company for 43 years and, given that our town was twenty miles from a grocery store, other stores, our grandparents and other relatives, the movie theater, and just about anything else that wasn’t work-related, he drove quite a bit on evenings and weekends, too. (My mom also drove, especially taking us to piano lessons and my sister’s dance lessons, but, if the five of us were going somewhere together, Paco always drove.)

In those days, it wasn’t unusual to “go for a drive” as a form of recreation. Given that we lived in the Massachusetts/Vermont border area, there was beautiful scenery in any direction you chose to drive. And hills. And what to us was normal but in retrospect were narrow, winding, and largely unmarked roads. It didn’t matter. Paco was used to it and was a very good driver with a very good sense of direction.

Paco had said that he would stop driving when he turned 90. That turned out to be not quite true. I think he stopped when he was 92. By then, my mother was entering her final battle with congestive heart failure and Paco was staying with her in their apartment nearly all the time. Their senior community offered transportation for the occasional trip to the grocery store or for medical appointments and I was nearby and there every day and could drive for errands or deliver things to them. They decided to sell their car and Paco replaced his driver’s license with an official state ID.

The IDs have a longer renewal term than driver’s licenses do, so his current ID is good until he is 103. He’s currently 96. He says he doesn’t think he will make it to 100.

We’ll see.

Paco is famous among family for always saying “One day at a time.”

It’s all any of us can do.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “drive.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/06/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-12-2021/

One-Liner Wednesday: pain

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
~~~ Richard Rohr

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/05/12/one-liner-wednesday-maybe-i-just-wish-it-was-warmer/

SoCS: last year and the year before

There is an old song “What a Difference a Day Makes” but today I’m thinking about what a difference a year makes.

Or two.

Two years ago this spring, my mom, known here as Nana, was living in the skilled nursing section of the senior community where she and my father, Paco, had lived for ten years. She was under hospice care as she was nearing the end of her battle with heart failure. My father and I visited every day for hours with frequent visits from my daughters and granddaughter ABC, who were living with us at the time. My out-of-town sisters were able to come to visit often, too.

Nana passed away in May 2019, a few days after her 87th birthday. We were able to hold her funeral in her parish church with a visiting hour before with friends coming to comfort us. There was also a gathering at her and Paco’s senior community.

Last spring, we were all in COVID lockdown. Visiting nursing homes was totally shut down with very limited exceptions for end-of-life situations. I often thought of what that would have looked like for us, if Nana had been facing death in spring 2020 rather than 2019. We would have lost those last few weeks with her, which were painful but also filled with precious moments. We were able to bring her flowers, including her beloved lilies-of-the-valley which blossom in May, just in time for Mother’s Day and her birthday. One of the last things she was able to eat was a little fruit tart I had brought for her birthday. I helped her by cutting it and fed her as she had me when I was a baby…

In 2020, we would likely not have been allowed to visit until the very end when she was unconscious. The church was totally closed, so there would have been no funeral, not even for family.

It was hard last spring, too, because we could no longer visit Paco every day in his apartment. Although visits to independent living apartments were not totally forbidden, they were supposed to be limited, with some masked outdoor visits preferred over anything indoors. My sisters had planned to visit for Paco’s 95th birthday in March but that had to be postponed. Little did we realize at the time that that postponement would turn into cancellation.

That brings us to this spring, which is just getting underway here with some of the early bulbs flowering and the first trees starting to bud. Paco is now living in assisted living which is part of the health care center. While visiting and gathering there are still limited, my younger sister and I were able to visit him for half an hour in his apartment on his birthday and he was able to share a large birthday cake we provided with the other residents and staff on his unit later in the day. Later this month, my elder sister will be able to visit in person for the first time since last summer. She lives out-of-state so hasn’t been able to travel to New York without prohibitively lengthy quarantine, but now, with vaccines available and changes in state policy, she will finally be able to see Paco again.

We have no idea, though, if or when daughter E and granddaughter ABC will be able to visit. They moved permanently to the UK in fall 2019, joining son-in-law L in London. They have since been joined by granddaughter JG, who recently had her first tooth break through.

Spouse B, daughter T, and I would love to think that this spring we could jet off to London to meet JG in person for the first time, but it isn’t possible. Maybe this summer? It depends on conditions with the pandemic and travel restrictions.

Will we get to hold her while she is still a baby or will she be an on-the-move toddler by that time?

Will Paco ever get to meet her in person? For the UK family branch to visit the US is much more complicated and we have no idea when that will be feasible. We also, sadly, don’t know how things will go with Paco’s cognitive decline. While sometimes he remembers names of family members, sometimes he forgets them.

Sometimes, he forgets that he has great-grandchildren at all.

In 2019, I knew that spring 2020 would be very different because my mother would not be there. I could not have imagined how different 2020 would turn out to be.

Or 2021.

I dare not project to spring 2022.

*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “difference.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/04/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-10-2021/

One-Liner Wednesday: Simplicity

I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

*****
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/02/24/one-liner-wednesday-art/

Lessons (re)learned

I’ve spent the bulk of my time over the last (more than I care to tally) years taking care of various generations of my family, which has involved a lot of interfacing with medical, educational, financial, insurance, religious, and other institutions. Since mid-December, I’ve been mired in dealing with issues around Paco’s health and his move from his independent living apartment into the assisted living unit of his senior community via a hospital stay and a stint in the rehab/skilled nursing unit. There has been an avalanche of problems with medical and caregiving issues, as well as the seemingly more mundane issues of changing addresses, getting mail forwarded, etc.

The intensity of it all has reminded me of lessons I once knew about dealing with institutions, but had managed to forget until they were in front of me, again and often. A caveat on the following list: some institutions or, perhaps more precisely, some individuals within the institution do manage to react both competently and compassionately to individuals in difficult circumstances, but this is more the exception than the rule in my experience.

  1. Institutions are set up to deal with things that fit a certain pattern. If your situation is different in some way, they don’t adjust well – or at all.
  2. Institutions care more about their rules, dogmas, and self-perpetuation than they do about you. This holds true, sadly, even for medical, caregiving, and religious institutions.
  3. Institutions are slow to react to changing circumstances. An example: insisting that you have a special form notarized in order to process an address change, even though you are already sending them a durable power of attorney and a death certificate proving that you have legal authority to do so, when, during a pandemic, this adds personal risk to their client and the notary.
  4. When an employee of the institution makes a mistake, the person can follow those instructions to the letter, but the consequences of the mistake will redound to the person or their loved one. The institution will not make allowances for their employee’s mistake and make things right, even though you were acting in good faith and doing what you were told to do.
  5. Lots of balls get dropped. You can been assured that thing X will take place tomorrow, only to find out the next week that it hasn’t – and that no one remembers that it was supposed to have taken place.
  6. It’s very difficult to get accurate information through when it needs to be relayed through multiple people. I can’t tell you how many times the answer to my question has no bearing on the question I actually asked.
  7. People hear what they want to rather than what you actually say. This is a corollary of point 1.
  8. Institutions don’t want to accept responsibility for their decisions, policies, and errors. They will blame you or the computer or something other than themselves. In New York State, they often blame Governor Cuomo.
  9. Institutions are defensive. A neutral re-telling of facts can be taken by an official as an accusation. This is a corollary of point 7.
  10. Institutions think they know more than you do. Sometimes, this is true. However, it is not true that they can understand someone as well after fifteen minutes of interaction as you do after knowing the person for years/decades.
  11. Having to do everything at a distance makes it harder. While some things are best handled electronically or in writing, others are easiest to take care of in person. One particularly gut-wrenching aspect of our current situation is that we can’t see Paco in person, so we can’t keep on top of what parts of his care plan aren’t being consistently followed. When I do see him and see that he hasn’t shaved for several days, it’s very disconcerting, knowing that someone is supposed to be helping him with that daily and that he isn’t able to articulate that to me or the staff himself. See points 4,5, 8, and 9.

I wish I could say that my relearned lessons made things easier or less upsetting, but they haven’t. I’m tired and frustrated and dreading the next set of problems/tasks awaiting me this week added to the unresolved things from last week.

Wish me luck.

I need it.