A little love letter....

Yesterday, the heavens opened and rained down love upon me, love dressed in the clothes of The World's Best Friends.


Just over a month since my sister's death, I found myself hard up against the deadline to clear out her apartment. 


I'd been through the rehearsals for this last August when she moved from a non-assisted senior complex into a wonderful assisted living facility, and the year before that when she moved to the senior complex from the house she'd shared with our mother.  Over the years, she had turned into - if not a full-blown hoarder - a person with a serious inability to part with stuff.  She wasn't a generalist, like the folks you see on reality TV, their spaces full of every item they've ever touched.  She was a woman with specific attachments.  While she was more than willing to toss things like family photos ("Why should I keep those? What's the point?" she asked as Young Girl and I pulled our history from the large green trash bin after my mother's death), she refused to part with a single book, be it a cheesy circa-1962 "annual" from the pharmaceutical giant for which my father worked (full of head shots of every intravenous fluid salesman in the country), one of four outdated dictionaries, or one of the dreadful romances or cozy-mysteries she favored. She had mock turtlenecks in every color L.L Bean produced in any given five-year period with fake Crocs to match. In the last move, I did manage to coax her down to 25 shapeless fleecy vests.  You get the picture.


Handling the tangible evidence of a lost life is always complicated, but doing so in an assisted living facility is exponentially more so. With every box or bag you cart down the hallway, you see realization of their near future on the faces of the elders you pass, regardless of their level of cognitive capacity.  They all know what it means when the furniture starts to move.  I did my best to work while people were in the dining room or at "Sit-er-Size" or bingo, but contact was unavoidable and painful all around. I told myself I was putting the task off because of my other responsibilities - funny how busy we become when we need to be - but the truth was I just didn't want to do it.  Too much finality.


I'd declined many offers of help. Part of me somehow felt I was doing some kind of penance, paying attention after the fact, and that such things needed to be done in isolation.  But the unit had been rented for August and it was Time.


I asked the fabulous women of First Amendment Friday if they could help me for a couple of hours yesterday.  I needed, I told them, help bagging up and loading the items I was sending to the Women's Crisis Center resale shop.  If we had time, maybe we could take some of the smaller stuff to my house in our cars.  Then we'd have lunch, and discuss a time when their teenage sons might be available to move the larger things.


Every one of them who was in town showed up at the appointed hour, and pitched in with organization and discernment that was far beyond my capacity. They knew what to do when I didn't and they did it. Before I really knew what had happened, my van was full of the resale bags and boxes, and their cars were packed to the brim with keeper things.  We dropped those at my house, delivered to the resale store, then rendezvoused for lunch.


Cue the cloudburst.


While we waited for our food, they announced that they'd decided they were going to take care of the rest of it that afternoon. Without my help.  They realized, they told me, that I'd reached my capacity and they took away the keys to my sister's apartment. After lunch, they came to my house and commandeered my van.


About an hour later, four chosen sisters, two of their husbands, and five assorted teenage sons and their friends descended upon me with everything in tow.  Everything.  Some went into the garage, some into the house. My van was packed with boxes of books I plan to sell a few towns away. I stood in my bare feet with my drawn, sad face and watched true friendship in action.


This post goes out to you, my friends.  My birth family may be gone, but your love and support hold me close in ways it never did.


Love,
Me

This and That

Greetings from the coffee shop, where I'm watching rainstorm clouds move from the NE to the SW and listening to old Jackson 5 tunes on the shop sound system. If that's not incongruity....

I'm sure a significant thought exists deep in my brain, but my daily life is so complex right now I can't access it. So as an attempt to retain my two or three readers, here's some random scatter.

• Young Girl turned 9 in January, but we just had her party last Friday. The "Cowgirl Campout" included horseback riding, tie-dying, roasting hot dogs and s'more marshmallows over a camp fire. Note: today's hangers are mighty flimsy compared to the ones I used as a child. The highlight of the evening was an activity I pulled from the net: Makeunders. Unlike a makeover, during which someone attempts to make the client as attractive as possible, a makeunder involves the attempt to make your guinea pig friend as hideous as possible. I expected them to use the garish and horrid cheap makeup I provided in conventional ways and places; they had other plans, which included in more than one case covering an entire face in red lipstick. I heaved a sigh of relief, as I realized that - for all their pretend coolitude - they're still little girls. I sadly suspect that this may be the last birthday party where that is the case.  Bittersweet.
• My mother is failing more everyday, but her spirit is strong and not ready to leave.  She's catheterized, diapered, and hospital-bedded. Our hospice service has been wonderful. We've found compassionate sitters, who are there 'round the clock.
  
• I'm aching for a summer in Oregon, but cannot make any plans while Mother is still alive. I'm trying to stay in the moment, in the hour, in the day, in the week and take things as they come. If it comes down to packing a single suitcase and loading child and dog in the car at a moment's notice, so be it.
• Several good friends are experiencing loss and tragedy. Please send your healing thoughts out into the universe.
• And the rain just keeps on falling.

Hopefully my next post will be, well, a substantive one and free of the annoying italics!

Finding the Umm in Summer

Summer is my least favorite time of year. I despise heat.

For five of the last seven years, I’ve escaped to my favorite home away from home, Ashland, Oregon. There I revel in cool mornings and evenings. I also get to hang with my friends in the Lithia Writers Collective.

What’s not to love?

Will I go this year? I don’t know yet, but I’m steeling myself for another Texas summer, just in case.

To psych myself up for that dreadful possibility and to make up for yesterday’s glum trinity, I’m determined to conjure some positive things about summer in my native state.

• Friday mornings around my friend V’s pool. She’s gracious enough to extend a standing invitation to the women of First Amendment Friday (i.e. our wine and conversation group), kids and all.

• Consumption of the year’s summer beverage with friends and family (in moderation, of course). Our standard Pinot Grigio  (from Target! In a box! Go get some! will likely, this summer be supplanted by a vodka concoction. The current contenders are sweet tea vodka, mixed with either water or lemonade; fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and plain vodka, with or without a salted rim; and blood orange Italian soda with vodka. My sister-in-law plans something that involves soaking pineapple chunks in vodka, too. Vote now for your favorite.

• Enjoying (in the morning, early afternoon, or at night) the patio furniture I finally talked The Man into purchasing at the end of last summer thanks to a ridiculous combination of discounts. If you sit without shade, you will not be enjoying anything.

That’s three….do you have any to add?

Update From Cancerville

My sister received good bad news yesterday; her breast cancer, although it is Stage IV, has not spread to her bones or to any of the usual organs. 

My mom is weaker every day, but felt good enough yesterday to attend the "Super Seniors" event at her church, albeit in a wheelchair.

I am waiting on some new genetic test results from my mom's doc, and then I will meet with a genetic counselor at the medical school in Dallas to discuss my options.

I draw strength from all the positive messages and thoughts you send us, so keep 'em coming my friends!

Anniversaries

It's happened, the big birthday.

I am now fifty years old. 

I wish I could say that today was full of joy, but the universe chose to remind me of impermanence and physicality. And that is as it should be, no?

The planned celebration, pared back this year to a few close friends, was cancelled as The Man, Small Child, and I are all suffering from various layers of an infectious parfait. We've been unusually healthy lately, but all running at hyperspeed.

And now, we're forced to rest.

When things do not turn out as you plan, try to find the real plan. The one that time reveals.

It's there, underneath your worries, complaints, aches, impatience. 

I haven't quite found it yet.

I suspect it will turn up when I stop looking.

Thanks to all of you who sent greetings and good wishes. Your friendship will mean even more in the next half-century.

Counting Down the Days

 That buzzing you hear in the air around you is the collective tension of parents everywhere. Only eleven days left in Small Child's summer vacation, and I'm counting every one. It might not be so bad if we weren't in the August misery.

August misery, you ask?

Day after day of 100+ heat. Every afternoon the sky (east or west, depending on the whims of the universe) looms with the promise of relief, and every night I close my eyes to ominous silence instead of thunder and rain.

It makes me so crazy that, tomorrow, I'm going to "light the oven" (as my late Aunt Belle used to say) and bake a peach cobbler.

Even crazier? The Man will grill the seven pounds of carne asada I just put in to marinate. 

Yes, friends, it's a certifiable "These People Are Crazy Summer Cookout."

Small Child's best friend and her extended family are here to visit her grandparents. The moms have been trading children back and forth and it's my turn to feed the crew.  So, I thought, why not be as miserable as possible?  That's what the heat does to you.

But there's the requisite bucket of pre-made margaritas congealing in the freezer (high fructose corn syrup be damned just this once) and three bottles of sparkling wine chilling so the grownups shouldn't notice the heat or mosquitoes too much. The Gang of Five (as I refer to the children) will be in and out, inspiring the classic Southern anthem, "Close the Door! You're Letting the Air Conditioning Out!" 

And about 11:30, when the kids are collapsed on a big bed somewhere in the house and the adults are sitting out on the patio, having accustomed ourselves to the humidity after all, I'll look around at these faces I've known for so many years and think, "You know, it's not that bad around here in the summer after all."

Pollyanna-rama

Do you remember, years ago, when Oprah wanted all of us to keep “Gratitude Journals”? I’m embarrassed, kind of in the same way I’m embarrassed to ‘fess that I dig an occasional Danielle Steele novel, to say that I kept one for a month or two way back when. And maybe more embarrassed to say that it did improve my day-to-day mood, if not all day every day then at least when I read over a couple of days’ worth of entries. I am constitutionally skeptical of this kind of thing, as I am of so much self-help "all you have to do is be positive to be happy" crap that's out there these days. And it's also extremely self-involved. At little too Joel Osteen, "What's in it for me?", if you know what I mean. 

But busy lives can tangle us in webs of self-involvement that block the ends of our noses, much less the beauty in the world.

It’s August 1. Every day is either hot as hell or almost as hot as hell and twice as humid. School for Small Child begins in 24 days and I’ve accomplished next to nothing on my list of things-I’ll-be-able-to-do-during-summer-vacation list. Large Dog’s presence in the house is becoming a source of domestic discord. I still need to clean out my office at the college. My last two go-to babysitters are leaving their parental nests for the joys of higher education.

What better time, then, to pull out the Gratitude Journal concept?

Hence, from a dark room late on a Friday night, a totally random, off-the-top-of-my-head compilation of a few things I like about my world right now.


• I have a large, private backyard. Like many around these parts it’s crunchy and hosts fire ants, but it has big trees and (for most of the part along the street) a solid fence. Therefore, on a night when I have a serious case of lazy, I have an alternative to the long, hot dog-walk (wasn’t sure about that hyphen, but I want to make clear that I’m not walking long hotdogs). Between the fence and the foliage, it’s unlikely that anyone speeding by in the dark will be able to discern the woman with the icy drink and her faithful companion prowling the perimeter, whatever she does or does bother to don.

• Many wonderful young women have helped out with Small Child over the years, but no one comes near to the delightful woman I shall now label The Sommelier. She finished college, with honors, four years ago. She didn’t take the route many expected – graduate or professional school, foreign study, or the like; she refused to do what was supposed to come next just because. Now she does great things in a job that has turned out to be an education in itself. The Sommelier dropped in for a visit today, bearing gifts for Small Child, a huge smile, and news of great personal growth and happiness. We will always consider her part of our family.

• Have you visited Goodreads? If you are reading this you are obviously highly accomplished at finding ways to waste time at your computer, so tread carefully here. You can post what you are reading, trade suggestions and actual books with your friends, and waste waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time playing The Never-ending Book quiz (which, in my opinion, has too many questions about fantasy series and too few on Modernist novels). Just don’t play when you’re really sleepy, or you’ll get your Bronte sisters and your Austen characters mixed up and end up with a percentage like mine.

• While I did not reach my goal of reading an actual, physical book every week, I have begun to read more actual, physical books. During the last week of our California vacation, I enjoyed a paperback a day. To preserve my reputation, I doubt I’ll be posting any of these great works on Goodreads. True confession: I even ponied up the $3.99 for Amazon Prime overnight shipping to get the book whose teaser chapters ended the one before. Straight to the beach house, for less than a tank of gas. That’s living.

• I’ve made peace with the decision to take Small Child out of public school. This deserves a blog entry of its very own.

• And I like my friends. Near and far.

Stay Tuned

I am still alive, friends....

I'm grading like a demon.

And, yesterday, my mom had a wee little heart attack.  No one is particularly concerned from a cardiac standpoint. The likely cause was oxygen deprivation due to low blood volume due to extreme anemia due to chemotherapy. 

Hopefully she will go home tomorrow.  

Friday, I'm off for my annual weekend with my local girlfriends.  Last year we painted.  This year we are going to make jewelry. We may even write.

All I know is that, barring tragedy, by this time Friday night I will not be blogging!

Immersion

For years, I was a vocabulary nerd (“Was? WAS”? I can hear those of you know me shouting). I’m sure this is some genetic quirk, which bloomed into full blown disease around 1974 when I began Latin classes and my sophomore English teacher began her own personal mission to turn us into SAT champions.

Ahhhhhh…I dream about those pre-No-Child-Left-Behind days, when teachers could actually give their students what they needed rather than what the state thought they needed. We actually were held accountable for what we were supposed to learn; no retaking tests until our grades were high, a practice my buddies with older children inform me is rampant.

My friends and I would sit around my dining room table, trying to trip each other up. Those teachers were like drug dealers; that vocabulary workbook and those declensions and conjugations were my gateway drugs. Next thing I knew it, I was an English major…and you all know where that leads.

Anyway, a whole mess o’ words ended up in my head, and their meanings became specialized with additional training. Along the way, I developed an intense loathing for jargon (I had kind of a rumspringa in grad school, but we all need some youthful rebellion). To this day, terms like “network” used as a verb set my teeth on edge as surely as a Styrofoam cooler squeaking in the back seat. But every vocation has its own language, and I became proficient in mine.

This is all fine and good, until you find yourself in what I’ll call The Land of Missing Vocabulary (insert diabolical laugh here). I first ventured across its borders in a precalculus-type class when I encountered the term “function.” I simply could not get my mind around that word’s mathematical meaning. I dug in my heels after that year: no more math for me. I was staying at home.

Fast-forward 30 years. Last weekend, six of my friends and I headed south to The Suburbs of the Big City for a couple of days of self-indulgence involving a spa, long meals, some killer caramel corn, and a reasonable amount of alcohol. All was going well until two of them entered the suite we were using as a gathering place, brandished some shopping bags, and announced, “We have a wonderful idea!” They proceed to open the bags and then dropped onto the table - right in front of me -

Paint. Canvases. Brushes.

“We’re each going to make a painting,” announced European Art College Graduate Painter (EACGP). “Then we can arrange it and I’ll hang it in my house.”

The two of them looked at my increasingly pale face.

“Come on. It’ll be fun,” chimed in Talented Painter II (TP2). “You can do it.”

“What a great idea,” chortled She Who Makes Amazing Assemblages and Altered Books, also known in this blog as DYR.

Luckily, there were seven of us and only six canvases. I pointed this out and said, “That’s okay, because I haven’t the first idea what to do.”

“Nonsense. You simply can’t screw up. These are acrylics. They’re very forgiving. You can split a canvas with someone,” said EACGP. And the die was cast.

Resigned, I picked up a brush.

About an hour in, it hit me. I'd wandered across a border into a group of natives, people who know the meaning of “gesso.” And the following words came out of my mouth, “I know what I want to do, but I can’t describe it or translate it onto this canvas. I just don’t have the vocabulary for this.”

The native speakers were helpful. TP2 offered a couple of technical hints. EACGP told me to just keep going. We had a marvelous time, and the final product was amazing. Somehow my half of the canvas didn’t embarrass me.

On reflection, I realized I’d been through two hours of the painting equivalent of language immersion. I remember walking into the first day of college French class and walking out without having understood a single word. By the end of the term, despite my inability to get the “R” right (you can take the girl out of Texas…), I could exchange a couple of sentences with a native speaker. It took going underwater, a place where I am not comfortable (at least not without scuba gear). But it worked.

This last week, I bought my own set of paints and brushes. I ordered some books. I’ve decided that it’s not too late to learn a second language. Most likely I'll never become fluent. But you never know. My friends and I are going to spend the next few months sharing our various talents and trying new media. Maybe one of these dialects will suit my ear.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.