Tag: writing

contents of the brain

Ten days of prep; eleven days before we get on the plane.  Going back to Hanoi, Vietnam. Soon.

I’ve made a long list a few weeks ago—finding, buying, arranging for, packing, and some home tasks because I love coming home to a cleaner house than I usually live in. I always do this. Tasks that are too arduous and not at all important fall to the wayside, but a few non-essential tasks get done along with the travel tasks. The big one this time is going through clothes—Julia’s and mine—and culling what we do not use. I haven’t done this with Julia since we moved into this apartment. She was resistant, but she seems to be happier in the morning picking out what she will wear for the day. I parted with just a few old things and a few things that either don’t fit anymore or that I haven’t really liked for a few years but hated to get rid of because they were perfectly wearable. Someone else will benefit and enjoy—at least that is what I tell Julia.

I am on the part of the list that is starting to be about packing. I’ve decided to take very few clothes—4 days’ worth (except for underwear) to be exact—and to plan to buy there.  We did that anyway last time, so might as well travel with loose bags going.  Julia is on board, and it will be interesting to see if she can buy clothes there and wear them. It will be harder for her than for me. If it is too hard, we’ll just be washing those four changes every four days.

I am not taking jeans, which is a first for me.  I live in jeans and usually travel in them even when I don’t use them when I arrive somewhere, but Vietnam is in the 80’s and 90’s right now, and when we come back in June, we’ll be close to that here.  I keep saying all that to myself to convince myself to do as I’ve planned.  Funny, how compulsive or obsessive I can be! It does help me understand Julia just a bit when I dig down into my own muck. 

One of my plans for this trip was to find ways for Julia to be a bit away from Ed and me. I have been looking for a companion or somewhere like a day program setting where she might spend a few days or a day a week. Although pursuing this pretty strenuously, I may have completely failed.  I was very excited to connect with one center that seems to be centered on training young adults on the spectrum for work by running a café, bookstore, and media center (not sure of this last one). I was corresponding with someone who is or was a director, and he invited Julia to visit and possibly take part. Then, last week, I received an email from him that is confusing, so I don’t know if any of that will happen. Julia is excited about some independence, and I still hold out hope I can find something.

My task list divided into daily tasks was created by AI.  ChatGPT, to be exact. I’ve been playing around with AI and was feeling overwhelmed when I needed to make the list. And AI did a decent job of a list. I’ve been modifying it as I go along. Today, with the big event of the day cancelled, I can do a few things on the list that I thought I would abandon—some gardening and clean-up of a file drawer—as well as reconnoitering the contents of the green toiletries bag that usually has everything from bandaids to nail clippers to antibiotic ointment. My pharmacy in a bag. Ed always says that I can get all of it there, which is true. Absolutely. But when someone needs to get rid of a headache, it is so nice to have it instantly instead of finding a pharmacy and trying to explain my needs to someone with limited English, and me with less than limited Vietnamese. 

And the cancelling of the day’s event, a brunch, also gives me the breathing room to sit down and write. Something that I have been neglecting. I started and did not complete a post about my quick trip to Virginia to my brother-in-law’s funeral. I will finish and post, not today.

There you have it, the contents of my brain this morning.

(I seem to have lost the “continue reading” sign, so for now, this will be all on the front page. Damn!)

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just a bit of musing

Emerging from a week of a cold. Kinda, sorta awful, but nowhere near as bad as last January with RSV.  I’ve coughed and had swollen—or what feels like swollen—sinuses. A quick nurse video visit with advice, no cure last week right after my birthday weekend. Not wanting to get any sicker than I was, not wanting to feel worse than yesterday’s death, I made a morning and evening list of mostly non-negotiable tasks which I have been following.

And yes, very slowly, or so it seems, getting better. 

Still coughing and exhausted.  I have exactly a week before the HILR spring semester and I am aiming for full, or almost full, recovery by then.  

The gym and physical activity are suffering right now, but I am taking the fact that I am missing physical activity as a good sign of recovery. No way was I thinking about exercise last week.  

The cold—the weather cold— feels very oppressive.  Gentle walking feeling impossible and that will last longer than a week.

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my word of the year

Yesterday, all I wrote was the date and then something or someone called me away. I have been busy since the year’s beginning. I don’t want to list all the important tasks that came my way, but, but, but…

Yesterday was my birthday and, as a friend described it, my personal New Year.  I owe myself some recognition, some noting, and some planning for the new year.  That planning has, in some years in the past, been a list of resolutions. There was at least one companion who disapproved of the making of resolutions which seemed to them to be limiting in scope and bound to fail. (I’ve probably written about this somewhere but not going to check now.) I have found resolutions to be maps, suggestions, reminders, and the making of them to be a good time of reflection and quiet resolve.

At least one of the resolutions, learning to live with dualities, was on my resolution list for years, seemed to grow my soul into understanding and acceptance. I had no idea of how to do that growing but my insistence that it remain on the resolution list reminded me of its importance until one day, I had that a-ha moment of recognizing how and what I was doing.

My goodness, I fear that makes little sense, but I don’t want to stop and add examples.

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always through, no matter what

A boy bringing in the new year.

“Get your shoes on. It’s time.”

Four days after Christmas, a few more days after Solstice, and one less than a few days after Chanukah. There is still New Year’s to look forward to or dread, but we are still in that breathing time amidst all these holidays. These are always days that I don’t expect to do or accomplish much. Not that these days are just for rest but for playing with paints or starting a 1000-piece puzzle or clearing that little pile of things with no place they belong on the kitchen counter or piling a whole bunch of papers from all over the house onto the in-box on my desk to be sorted at some unspecified future time. Nothing is resolved, but small movements towards big steps are being taken.

Yes, it has been like that these last few days.

Julia went to her day center last Friday. Ed and I went to the gym and then spent the afternoon on our laptops, reading, writing, and planning a weekend in NYC to see a friend’s play and to celebrate Julia’s 25th birthday. It will be cold—we remind each other a few times, thinking about where we will stay and how we’ll feel about public transport in the middle of January. And walking.

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on one hand, the other hand, and something else

A week, not quite, most of a week of forced quiet. I took last Wednesday off feeling the beginnings of something like being sick. I missed a Shakespeare class at Harvard and a choir rehearsal in the evening.  I slept a good deal of the day, wrote emails, figured out a new drug insurance for myself and checked on Julia’s, and started the book club book for this month. And was quiet.

I stayed home on Thursday, not going to see Cheshire and the boys.  Honestly, if it were not for the drive —a good 45 minutes to an hour and always in traffic— I would have gone for a short time. I was on the cusp of feeling better but not completely there.

Writing this, I realize that my RSV bout in January is influencing my behavior. I am slightly fearful of the good health that I have enjoyed.  Last January showed me that I could get sick. Good and sick.

And so, I stayed home to take care of myself, again being quiet for the day, catching up on small tasks that have slipped through a life with cracks and working on housing for Julia. 

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manifesto

A small truth gently unfolded itself very quietly last night.

I have been working on a book-length memoir for a few years, and it is close to finished. It needs one more good edit, maybe some beta readers, and another edit before I either try to get it published or create a Substack.  But.

But . . . but . . . but . . .

There is no way that I am going to get it finished. Not right now, not before the end of the year, or before my January birthday—both goals. Maybe I will never finish it. This is an awful truth. Maybe everyone else sees it, has seen it for a long time, and is rolling their eyes or mentally saying, “duh!” Okay, but not me. I am either that eternal optimist or someone who refuses to look reality in the face.

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vermont 1

Shelburne, Vermont. Definitely morning frost. And thank goodness it also turned chili at home before we left. The extra sweatshirt thrown into the bags at the last minute will be used!

Ed and I are ensconced in a sweet and small B&B owned by an architect turned painter and her husband, who is very nice, but I haven’t drilled him on his work life. Yet.

Julia is at Zeno Mountain Farm for a five-day, four-night weekend. She went to their fall weekend last year and was invited back for this year.  (She has not yet been invited for summer camp, which is my goal for her. Once invited, she can come up every year for the rest of her life.  Everyone does, and thus, the wait is long for a spot.) She helped me pack her stuff and then re-pack when we found out how cold it was really going to be. The ride up was pleasant and uneventful until we got to the country road part that goes up and down a mountain for almost 30 miles, okay, a small mountain. Julia began getting angry, anxious, and extremely unpleasant.  At one point, she lobbed a sweater at Ed, who was driving. She spent a good deal of time swearing at the mountain, the road, and us. By the time we arrived at the Farm, I had to spend time with her trying to figure out what she wanted to do. (Not at all sure what we would do if she wanted to not go to Zeno altogether.)

I was unsure if we could leave her.

And then she went through the big farmhouse doors, and someone said hello to her. And in almost an instant, or at least a few minutes, she was all smiles. Hugging two people she knew, ready to hand off her meds to the nurse and go to her assigned room on the third floor. When she came downstairs, she was ready to have us leave. She gave us happy hugs and went off to a giant bay window with couches in front of it to watch the sunset. 

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news of the week

Julia came home from The Price Center on Thursday with two pieces of news.  First, that she had gone to the YMCA with peers. She got on the van and spent the morning on the stationary bike, if she is to be believed. I am not sure she spent the whole morning there, but when she goes to the gym with me, mostly on weekends, she can do 40 minutes on the stationary bike. The big part of that news is that she was willing to leave the building!  She has gone on a few community visits, like the zoo, to help with watering plants, but that was of high interest to Julia—she loves zoos, loves watering. I know there is a lot more going out into the community that she can take part in.

Fingers crossed that this is a beginning. 

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process

Working on specific projects — this Sunday’s service at my church, the writing prompt for next week’s meeting of my new writing group at FUUSN, and the agenda for the writing class I’ll be facilitating at HILR in October. Both the writing groups are called Letters—In the Company of Writers.

I need to say that this was not the way I intended to spend my summer—I had “simplified” my usual routine and intended to be editing the “big” memoir all summer. I had blocked out days that were not going to be for anything other than writing/editing and had given up any wish for leaving town for any length of time.  

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no. 15

Fifteen years is a long time. I can tick off who has grown, where and how we’ve lived, who has come into my life and who has left, what I have learned and some of what I have forgotten, what new toys I have acquired and what I have let go of. It feels like a lifetime of change and it feels like a moment.

Fifteen years ago today, around lunchtime, David died. I still miss him. I can almost imagine sitting down and having a conversation with him. I have so much news and so many questions. At the same time, however, I cannot imagine it at all. He is too far in time and space and changes away.

Time seems to have wiped away, wiped clean, the most painful missings, the heart-wrenching grieving, leaving in its wake a sweetness, a place from which strength could be built. I know the pilings on which this life I now live rests.

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