RSV

Yesterday, after hours in an emergency room bay, I was put in a holding area, hooked up to monitors and oxygen, and told I might be moved to a room later on in the evening.  It had been a long day and I was hungry, head-achy tired and still coughing but the day of oxygen cleared some of my brain and I felt a shift to giving into this process of being sick. 

My not-feeling-so-well of new year’s eve blossomed into just plain sick the next day. The seasonal cough that humidifiers and inhalers and gallons of water could not conquer shifted into something else — a dry hacking that would not stop.  The cough and chills and body aches and an exhaustion that drained every ounce of will power out of me.  

The beginning of January is probably a good time to be sick.  Julia’s activities, as well as mine, are on hold for the holidays. We had gotten through almost all of the seasonal visiting and partying. I was looking forward to a few days of lying low; however, not quite as low as I was laid. 

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consequences

New Year’s Eve has always been a veguely uncomfortable holiday for me. I’ve never been to Times Square to watch the ball fall, I don’t favor loud parties, rarely have I gone out for diner and dancing. We never built any traditions for the evening which didn’t bother me at all until I was alone.

I think I was happiest when I was working in restaurants or when David and I (and one or the other of the girls) went to movies and maybe somewhat of a quick dinner out. The turning of the century was a good NYE—a bunch of friends gathered at David’s father’s house in Jersey. We were living in Indy then and we still had NYC friends, some with small children. We cooked a nice dinner—I don’t remember what. Wine and maybe champagne. We sat in the kind of dining room that I knew growing up and ate on Dad’s good china, lifting his best wine glasses. One friend didn’t accompany his family because he was a computer guy and needed to guard his hard and soft ware if the worst case of Y2K predictions came to pass. Another friend announced that she was adopting a baby from Vietnam—the baby who now has one year old twins of her own. 

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of ghosts and christmas tree lights

I have been trying/drafting and deleting/ to explain just how this week is.  It is time out of time, ordinary moments out of ordinary order, days of big meals and late church services and traveling and visiting. And too much traffic through tunnels and delays at airports.

No flying this year, but I noticed something I have not really taken account of before.  I have been aware but not articulated to myself the presence of so many ghosts in and around every event, every visit, every meal, every ornament hanging on the tree, every candled trimmed to fit into Julia’s great grandmother’s menorah.

Not one of those events, practices or things stand by themselves. Nothing is new. Rather they are the latest version, the pencil sketch with many erased sketches beneath, the latest in the series of what I remember as winter holiday times. I am aware of both what my eyes perceive and also what I hold in my heart.

The winter holidays always bring on some blues, as they did a few weeks ago, but the sitting with the revelation of sketches in time has brought some awareness, some clarity, some way to find the joy, the blessings in the times that have past.  I am aware of the richness and the subtlety, the near inmoveable traditions dressed with the changes that time brings.

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mood and transformation

Julia is not in a good mood today.  

I woke up late today, sleeping through the alarm that I never, ever sleep through. The clock suddenly said 8:36, and the social worker, who visits us every other month as part of a Medicaid program, was due at 8:45. I jumped out of bed, pulling on my jeans as I not-so-quietly urged Julia to get up and dressed. Julia hates rushing. No, she doesn’t hate rushing, she doesn’t rush. She complains that I am rushing her which I need to do often to get her on The Ride, or to my choir rehearsal, or to a dozen other things when ‘on-time’ is relevant. If only I could bestow an understanding of time on her—on time, late, soon, rush, hurry, scheduled, delayed, tardy. Oh, so many words! 

This time deficite is absolutely nothing new. We’ve been struggling with time for almost as long as I’ve known Julia. Possibly the toughest part of the challenge is my desire/need/obsession with being on-time. 

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enemy from within

Julia jacket this year.

The “enemy from within.” That’s what he has called us and I rather like that title today. And I am telling my disappointed daughter that she needs to be part of the change, part of the fight for what we as a family, as well as a community, want to see in our country.

We support and defend the rights of women and workers and immigrants and transgender people and unhomed people and people with disabilities and our elders. We believe in diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe in climate change and that our world and its environment needs protection.

Julia’s jacket in 2016

We stand for healthcare for all, for public schools, for an end to book banning, for the separation of church and state, for the rights of students and teachers to demonstrate against any and all wars, for strict gun control, for taxing the rich their fair share, for subsidized housing, social security, medicare. We fight against racism and sexism and homophobia and christian nationalism and facism.

In my gut I feel that the party of our choice did not strongly stand for what we believe in nor did it fight against what is abhorant to us. That needs to change. We all need to attend to the change to be worthy of the title “enemy from within.”

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counting joy

The blur of the busy, the full plate, and the inability to see what is missing or left out or left behind until I trip over the very necessity that I proclaim I steadfastly chase and hold onto dearly . . . 

Joy.

In the darkness that I allowed to blossom last week, I saw the glories of fall—the orange and gold leaves of the massive tree I can see from my kitchen window!  I have observed this tree washing dishes and cooking and watering plants and wondering how I am going to close my two kitchen windows tight. The tree is a few doors down the block in another backyard.  Green all summer, it has slowly been turning into a mighty blaze of autumn color. Last Monday, it was glorious as if lit from deep within, as if ablaze of yellows and oranges. I was almost unable to take in so much color. As the week moved forward and the wind picked up, topmost leaves fell in a rain of gold. By Wednesday, some of the orange was fading into brown and some of the brown joined the rain. By Friday, the gold had almost vanished and the tree top was almost bare, and the weekend saw more of the same.  Today, much more than half the tree is all branches, a skeleton of its summer self.

The noticing filled me with something that I had lost to exhaustion and frustration.

I can admit to missing the necessity of raking leaves.  I know I used to complain when my Madison gardens were filled over and over with the leaves of big trees for what felt like months.  And I miss the Julia as a little girl who raked and jumped in piles and enjoyed it all. Now, I look in yards full of leaves with a bit of longing, but not enough longing to volunteer to help rake.  Maybe some year soon?

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back to a drawing board

Disappointing email on Friday morning came in as Julia and I arrived at an anime convention in Westford.  

Nice thing about Another Anime Convention, yes, that is its name, is that there is a special ticket rate for those, parent or caregiver, who are there only for a kid. “Parent in Tow” is on my badge and I didn’t even have to explain why I wanted the rate accompanying an adult. The badge had some limitations but it was plenty for us.  I went to the “game shows” and the panels, including one very interesting one about women writers and performers in ancient Japan. Julia most enjoyed the hand sewing workshop that was pretty useful and very well done. The “Parent in tow” badge was about a third of the cost of Julia’s day badge. Convention tickets are expensive and I appreciate the break. So good on them!

Back to the email.  It was from The Price Center. The day center that I toured in August and was so excited to hear that there were openings in the program that I was most interested in for Julia. Back in August, it took more than a week to get Julia’s DDS referral packet to them. I don’t know whether that delay was the cause of the disappointing email. Really, may have or maybe not, but if it was, it is pretty rediculous to think Julia lost out because her referral packet was delayed by days.

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morning walk on the beach 

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

Impressions in wet sand. Sneekers and boots, sandles and a few bare and naked feet. Just a few bare feet, it is october afterall.  Round impressions from walking sticks and baby feet every so often. But regularly, those baby feet. And I wonder why. I imagine a parent, scooping up a toddler into a piggy back ride and then letting the wiggling wee one down after a short riding respite. Dog prints in wild archs going in and out of the ends of waves, the line where the tide erases everything. 

And I imagine how sooner or later, tonight and tomorrow early morning, a tide will come in and take away all traces of our shod and unshod animal prints. Flood the prints with the waves coming ashore, leaving the sand smooth and pristine again. 

What if the bits of sadnesses, stresses, worries and longings of our lived days were left in the prints we leave during our walkings. Left to be swollowed up by the lapping water. As if by intention, as if what we could not carry any longer could be returned to some universe. As if by returning to the sea what we could not bear, we might be comforted and even healed by the rhythmn of the to and fro, in and out, of the salty waves. 

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ducks

There is the possibility of a longer description of our month coming soon, but this . . .  I’ve been saying for awhile now, weeks or month, I think, that Julia is in a good place these day.  Still unsatisfied with Bay Cove, but more willing to look beyond her current feelings, more accepting of small transitions, more able to regulate over small mishaps and much more comfortable in herself and her surroundings.  Not all the time, mind you, but more regularly.  And this, even though, we have/are weekend traveling 4 out of 5 weekends last and this month.

This weekend was our weekend home.  We vegged out a bit, watched British Bake Off, etc.,  We made a list of what Julia would not do and what she would/could do. Julia usually hates lists. On that list was using clay, something she has always been creative with but hasn’t touched in more than a year.  It has been almost two years since Julia stopped making art every day. For a while she was willing to do something once a week with her art mentor, but when her mentor became ill, Julia was not even willing to do that. Julia was a child who made some art every day. If anything, keeping her from sketching in text books, on binders, on homework, on programs, on any piece of paper was next to impossible. She she played with clayed, figured out sewing a stuffed cat character; Julia could do any art she put her mind to.

And I have stormed the heavens these last two years that her impulse to create would return, afraid that it would not. And carrying the very sad idea that I contributed to the dying of that impulse.

So, yesterday, after church, she went with someone who is spending some time with her, to Michael’s and they bought some sculpty.

And she made this:

And I was close to crying.  I am trying not to cheer or optimistically predict a return to art making.  No, not yet.  I’ll just take pictures and share.

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