Tag Archives: Warwick

Sometimes life fools you.

#Rise_and_Shine Welcome to #Monday, September 5, 2022

Sometimes you think you know your life. Sometimes life fools you.

Yesterday afternoon, while traveling only a very short distance, my SweetMan and I were going to pick up a specific kind of clam rake that someone we’d never met was offering for free on our local Nextdoor site.

Thing is, Al had not been feeling too good the past few days. He’s had severe motion sickness all his life. With birthdays, unbidden it comes and goes often, causing him to sit, quietly, and make no sudden movements. But, he really wanted *that* clam rake!

We arrived at Jim and Jane’s. The clam rake was perfect! Instant kinship. Jim and Al hit it off – lots of shared interests. Jane was sunning on their deck. Jim and Al went inside to continue to talk. I joined Jane on the deck. Good conversation.

Eventually, Jim and Al came outside. Al wasn’t looking too good. Longer story short: after they joined Jane and me on the deck, Al grayed, broke a cold sweat, collasped, passed out, and vomited.

Jane called 911. Jim helped me bring Al to an upright position so he wouldn’t aspirate his vomit. By the time Warwick Rescue arrived, Al was sitting squat on the deck, phasing in and out.

Time was approximately 2 PM.

I arrived at Kent County Hospital Emergency, just after they brought in Al. I had to wait until they processed him to get the okay to see him.

Doctors. Information exchanged. “Tell me what happened.” more than once. All the while I’m watching to see his color come back – he had looked like library paste sitting on that deck.

Chest x-ray. Off for a ct scan. Back in #22. Color looking better. Speech more coherent. Waiting for blood work tests to come back. Talking with each other. Laughing. Relaxing.

Shift change. Two new doctors come in. “We think it’s better that you stay overnight for observation.” I raised my hand. “Do I have a vote in this?” Al said, “Okay.”

Once in a while I had stepped outside to breathe the (now) late afternoon/early evening air and to exhale.

When Al got supper, part of which we shared as I sat on the edge of his bed, I felt he was in good hands; and, although he doesn’t like hospitals, it was okay for me to kiss him and leave.

Time was approximately 7:15 PM.

On my way home last night, I stopped to thank Jane and Jim for their kindness. They offered me an adult libation, just a shot. I accepted.

All things being good and equal, once everything is okay today, I’ll go back to Kent County Hospital later and bring my SweetMan home.

Sometimes you think you know your life. Sometimes you don’t. Just as well, sometimes.

#HappyLaborDay

(posted to Facebook, Monday, September 5, 2022 at approximately 6:44AM)

“Dirty Money”

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“Dirty Money”

Think of all the things you’ve done to “make money”. That, in itself, is a ridiculous concept. We don’t “make money”, the government does. We, you and I, earn money.

I started earning money as a girl – granted an allowance for accomplishing certain chores. Chores done, allowance paid. No chores done, no allowance. Some chores completed, partial payment.

Simple.

Time passed.

At 19 I landed my first “adult” job as a clerk-typist at a social service in Providence, Rhode Island. Paid weekly. Still living at home with my parents in Warwick, RI. Within a few months I fledged myself. Time to go out on my own. One room apartment on the East Side, shared bath, no parking. Independent. Earning money. Paying my own bills.

Time passed.

Many changes.

Some time later I began to see and understand better about what money, as a thing, did to folks. The earning of it, who had more of it, who had less of it and how those two conditions stratified and segregated people from and against each other. Judgements. “Better than” because one had more money. “Less than” because of having not so much money.

This is nothing to say about how the getting of that money perverted folks – what one did to get more, as if the flash and bling and apparent “power” that all that money was had made a person, somehow, superior or more influential, ultimately.

I still earn money and appreciate what it allows me to do – support a household, buy food, purchase something beautiful, share it to support a charitable cause or new initiative. There are times, however, when I think about the earlier tradition of barter – I have something you want, you have something I want, we determine a fair value, make the deal and each of us walks away satisfied and happy. Simple. Neverthemore, in most Westernized societies, barter has faded and it’s the dollar that rules.

Next time you think about money, think about what it really is – a coin or a decorated piece of paper – and, what it takes to earn it, how the having or not having it creates false and devastating divisions between us (as people and as nations); and, what’s the true value and human cost of “earning money”.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

written by: Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer

Before All Our Lives Began To Change – poem

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BEFORE ALL OUR LIVES BEGAN TO CHANGE

Before all our lives began to change

time was stretched between holidays like

carnavale lights and summer lasted forever

every year until Labor Day mysteriously

arrived again to change living to another circle

It seemed we played all the time — hair cuts on

darby horses and watermelon seed fights, building

castles of sand and jelly fish oozing against the

jetties, discovering the nest holes of horseshoe

crabs below the high tide line, and snow forts drifted

three stories every January and February, sledding

hellions down Cooperstown Road, the cold and snowflakes

cutting younger cheeks, with the excruciating pleasure

to do it, again Playing “I have a little umbrella,”

dragging the chair covers across the sand like dragon tails

or lizards or princesses Shrieking to begin hide-and-seek,

crouched under the crocheted orange and blue and brown

comforter — dying to be found and hoping that we would

never be discovered, because that discovery always

ended in a serious session of being tickled until we

could not breathe

But, then, living changed us into other circles,

other places, other people.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dedicated ~ In Love and Memory to: Barbara Dunn Blossom, Genevieve Dunn, Helen Smith Dunn, Mahlon H. Dunn, Jr., Tacy Dunn SanAntonio

(c) 1997 Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis ~ RHODE ISLAND WOMEN SPEAK: An Anthology of Authors and Artists, The Rhode Island Committee, The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Ed. Rosemary W. Prisco, p.19.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

White Butterflies

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