December weather —gray and wet, damp more than cold —does not inspire festivities. Neither do the circumstances of our larger community — justice, kindness, compassion seem never-present. Pondering the absence of fair minded people to think fairly about issues that we’ve all talked about since before I was born has quieted my typing fingers. I have no unique perspective, I do not move in a large world, the issues that I am passionate about may touch peripherally on the challenges of the day, but I have so little to add. And yet the racial, ethnic, religious and neuro-diversity of our community is something that I cannot absent myself from. Do I do wrong to turn from the issues of the day in favor of my passions?
encores
It looks like Julia’s dancing ballerina dinosaurs will again be offered as part of a Paper Cloud Apparel fund raiser. This time, they have asked if we have a local cause we would like to have proceeds going to. I thought of the adaptive skating program that Julia is going to on Sunday afternoons. Julia and a gaggle of other kids from very little to older teens work with volunteers in small groups and one on one to learn to skate. The same folks offer an adaptive hockey team for older kids and adults and I know at least one person who is on the team. Julia struggles a bit but she is willing to go each week and she is getting better little by little.
bison and twinkle lights
Much too early on Thanksgiving day. The turkey should go into the oven in a three hours and I should be waking up in two to get it in there. A co-cook to be sure but turkey responsibility translates into responding to the alarm and pulling on jeans and sweatshirt to begin the big feast.
I kinda’ wish I could go back to sleep but I am not putting in (or out) the effort to do so. Instead, I browse a bit, watch the end of a very sweet movie (Quartet: Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay and Maggie Smith) that I’ve fallen asleep on for the past two nights, and pull this up to scribble. And scribbled on until the day began and never got back to this.
asking
There is a bison in the bathroom. Julia wants to start decorating for Christmas. And I am in deep wonderment about why over a thousand people checked out my blog the other day.
Deep wonderment first. I usually get between a dozen and fifty folks popping into this space whenever I publish a piece. I do wonder what makes anyone who is not a friend read and possibly return but I am grateful, a bit intimidated and very happy about it. Of course, many times I am pretty sure that I know the two people in Australia, the one in Bolivia and the one in Canada who check in. I get too many US hits to identify readers by the numbers but if wordpress broke the US stats down by states, I’m sure I’d recognize most readers. At the beginning of the month, I considered disconnecting news of my blogging on Facebook, because I planned to be blogging a lot during November and I am never comfortable pushing my ideas on others. But I remind myself that making available and pushing are two different things.
grandpa
Did grandpa love me? Was grandpa excited when I came home? Did grandpa scoop me up when I was a little baby? Did I have a dress on when I met grandpa? He did think I was cute? My grandpa would never abandon me. My grandpa is handsome.
During breakfast, I was checking Facebook and Julia spied a picture of her grandfather, David’s father, that one of her cousins posted on Veterans Day. It unleashed a torrent of questions and ideas that must have been bottled up for sometime.
It was a candid picture of Bob Schanker during his air force days. A half smile, jaunty tilt of the head and obviously happy. He was a navigator during the Second World War and, if his stories were to be believed, he lived some of the best years of his life during that time. He thrived in the company of men from all over the country. He explored outside of his Jersey roots. He was no longer under his mother’s thumb. He saw a little action — I’m not sure how much. Most of his time was spent state side, first learning and honing his skills, and later teaching those navigators who came in behind him. Much later, he would become a favorite and beloved high school business teacher and so I do not doubt that his gifts were put to good use in the service. There are many pictures of the girls and/or women he met during his service time. He had no special girl at home, at least the way he told it, and so flirted and socialized (and took pictures) as he moved from base to base.
dreams
“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
Came across these Rilke words this morning as I looked for something else. Rilke always speaks to me, from wedding vows (“. . . a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude . . .”) to growing a spiritual life ( “. . . learn to love the questions . . .“). I come back to, stumble across, have quoted back to me words that he wrote that always draw me deeper.
cleaning
Written 13 November 2014 and once again too fell asleep before getting it here. A pattern emerges.
Didn’t write yesterday because I was . . . um. . . um . . .cleaning. I don’t at all mean that I am ever a slave to my house but there are a few weeks in the spring and the fall when the garden takes precedence. The garden might always take precedence if I lived somewhere where I could garden year round, but Wisconsin demands an obvious respite from the garden in the winter and somewhat of a respite when the bugs of high summer ignore clothing and chemicals to feast on dedicated weed movers.
During those weeks when I am “taking out the garden” and then “putting the garden to bed,” I passionately want to be doing those earth based chores. There is little that is more satisfying than emptying the compost bins and covering a bed with a few inches of that gold. Or clearing away what is left over from the late fall and seeing the smallest shoots appearing.
slack
The slack. Like in “taking up the . . . “ That used to mean, leaving my car with almost no gas because I was too tied to stop for a fill up and finding a full tank the next morning. Or having someone to wash dishes when I cooked, or taking a turn cooking. Or running the vacuum while I straightened up before guests arrived. Or picking up milk or the kid after school or the conversation that I let dangle. Or getting the coffee/tea started after the main course. The slack is what a partner does without really thinking. Not part of the grand division of labor or assigned chores or anything that you talk about.
God, I miss it.
I was thinking about the slack after I wrote that Julia changed the toilet paper roll yesterday. A tiny piece of slack, true, but one thing, just one thing that I did not have to do. But that one little thing brought to mind how I would like to have a roommate, a partner in crime, a partner. Period. I was not built to live alone.
small steps
Julia put a new roll of toilet paper in the holder on Friday. A small gesture but one of the “one small step . . .” kind of things. I know that for any 13 year old to actually notice that some household chore needs to be done and to do it without being asked is pretty incredible. For Julia, the noticing of the world around her in that way and to reach out to contribute to it is a “giant leap.”
Is the the vision therapy and probiotics at work? Or is it just maturation? Certainly, it can’t just be being 13.
Brunch yesterday with friends and talk about middle school and their coming sabbatical. The middle school talk was interesting. I got to vent which I seem to need to do with ever increasing frequency these days. My friend talked of how much she likes the school that I decided not to send Julia to. I cannot say that Julia would have been better served there. The change of principal seems to work in that school’s favor but it was big and crowded and at least last year there was no possibility of asking for an art class each semester. But my friend talked of the near magical teachers, welcoming community and her son absolutely beamed talked about HIS school. Oy!
recovery
Laying in bed this morning, waiting for Julia to wake up to begin the day. I am sore and a bit achy in the body after pushing myself yesterday to plant 400 bulbs. If I bought next autumn’s bulbs the day after I planted, I would probably have many fewer tulips and narcissus in my garden. And yet, I am so very grateful that my optimism and passion for the garden has returned. Actually, it has been around the whole of this planting and weeding year.
Last fall, after a rather dreadful emotional summer, I seemed to emerge from the heavy years of grieving. Last year, around this time, I realized that I was walking around with a lighter air. I did not trust the feeling and kept looking around behind myself to see if the gloom and doom goonies were waiting to pounce. I waited for the inevitable sadness to descend when something attempted failed or someone said something, did something, something something to remind me of the life I lost. I was metaphorically shifting my eyes from side to side checking.
And of course, the time from then to now has not been without feeling sad or lonely or yearning for what I cannot have again. But the burden of carrying that baggage around does not weigh on me as it did. Perhaps I have earned a wheeled suitcase with expanding handle to haul around my baggage. Wheels help.
In a celebratory but slightly achy mood, I feel like I can finally announce with glee that I’ve started reading again! This too has been coming on slowly. To lose the pleasure of reading and to live without it has been awful. I’ve always read. It is an activity that defines me — not that when someone asks what I do, I announce passionately that I read, but to myself and for myself, it has been part of my definition. After David died, I lost the ability to be lost in some story as if I had lost the ability to understand my native tongue. And it took so very long to come back that at times I worried that it was a permanent loss. What if I became that kind of person who never browses for book, who travels on vacation with a bunch of movies loaded on my iPad, who has no interest in the NYTimes Sunday Book Review section? When I look at these fears, I admit to feeling a wee bit pretentious. But hell, yes! That is me and I was really scared that that was never going to be me again.
And many times during this time, I been the kind of dinner guest who sucks the air out of a room. I had no questions to ask new acquaintances, nothing to add to conversations and when I listened, my eyes glazed over and forgot everything the speaker said almost before the words were out of his/her mouth.
And I wondered if this was forever. What if my best slightly intellectual, perceptive, pretentious years were behind me? How long could I fake it with my faithful friends who must have noticed my less than sparkling repartee?
At the beginning of the summer, I started reading again. I was gentle with myself and went back to my reading roots — biography and science fiction and a bit of memoir. I read with that same looking over my should feeling. Was this just a season of reading that would pass? Towards the end of the summer, a friend asked if I wanted to come to a book club meeting. She invited me because it was a new group and she knew that I had not liked the memoir that the group was reading. Was I really the person to invite to spice things up? But I went, just glancing at a few chapters to insure my disgust. At the meeting I voiced my feelings and listened to the passionate defense of the piece. Last year I had forced myself to read the book, after the meeting, I re-read and changed my mind. At least for the most part.
And I liked the people in the group, so I read the old Barbara Kingsolver book that was the next one up, and last months I read The Orchardist (by Amande Coplin, and very good). I seemed to be able to contribute to the discussion, ask questions and listen to opinions. Along the way I indulged in the guilty pleasure of all of the Hunger Games and Divergent. Literary merit be damned, I was having fun. Just yesterday, I looked up Connie Willis because I could not remember the full title on one of her books (To Say Nothing of the Dog: or, How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last which is very funny and well done) and discovered that she had published two books since I stopped reading and was struck with wondering that the world had run so far ahead during my healing time. What else will I discover?
So, I come back to words on the page and screen (almost understanding the intricacies of Overdrive — gotta’ stop by the library one more time to connect my devices.) with such gratitude that this gift has returned and also with a new and growing list of must read titles.
Chasing Joy 