Energy

I never thought mobility would be a problem once I found the right shoes and correct inserts, but it is.  I have found myself searching madly for something that will allow me to continue walking at the zoo, or in the woods, or even around the block.

I have almost zero energy and it's been this way in some regard almost all of my adult life, but it is much worse after the past year. It is possible I had a mild case of the Coronavirus last Spring, but I began sitting around more and more as time went on. Now standing even five minutes wears me out and causes pain in my lower back.

I keep thinking if I press on it will get better and sometimes it seems it is, but in micro-miniscule amounts.

Finding fulfillment

 

Beverly Clearly has died! 

My son told me when we talked on the phone yesterday and it hit me hard. As both a child and an adult who had children and has spent years volunteering in children's libraries, I value her books.

Henry Huggins was one of my favorites and who didn't love Beezus and Ramona!

Then I read she had two children, three grandchildren and one great grandchild and I found one more tie to her.

As a seventy plus woman with three children, five grandchildren and no great grandchildren I am aware of how precious children are. I never aspired to simply fill the world with children for the sake of doing that. I have always felt that along with bringing a child into the world it is my duty to help that child find fulfillment.

Finding another's fulfillment is not easy. It means exposing them to many things and then helping them focus in on those things they find most interesting. Fortunately for me, that is finding another's fulfillment. It gives me intense pleasure to help people find the books, topics, activities they love and then help them find ways of experiencing even more of whatever it is.

These things take time and patience. Although having lots of great grand children sounds romantic, it would make it almost impossible. One or two little chicks in a neighborhood of opportunities makes for better books and better lives.

PTSD

 

I grew up in a large extended family that included a nursing home so popular in a small town that it often had a waiting list of over forty people. 

My grandmother was kind and wanted each person treated like they were your own mother or grandmother and yet: I remember older ladies with sheets tied around their waists crying for help. They were confused and terrified and I was taught to feel sorry for them, even try to comfort them.

But how do you comfort someone who is homesick, confused, ailing and being forced to live out their days in the death warehouses we call nursing homes?

Grandma's Ladies home was one of the best, but it was far from perfect. I experienced small versions of this homesickness when I went away to college, but without the inability to do anything about it.

Today I fell asleep in the late morning and had the most terrifying longest dream I've ever had. 

I was sitting in my desk chair when I discovered I couldn't move my arms and my voice didn't respond correctly either. It was as if I had had a stroke. I cried out for help but a whole procession of people came and went around me without doing anything at all. 

I would recognize them and know they were kind people, but they would lean over and look at me trying to sob out, "help me." Then they would come to their own conclusions that did not include any kind of help. I was so terrified. I begged my sons, their friends, even my Dad and no one would offer me a hand. I felt like I would be okay if I could just get someone to help me stand up for a minute, but no one would.

This dream felt like it went on for hours and in fact I woke up nearly two and a half hours later, stunned, exhausted and terrified. It probably took me twenty minutes to feel normal again.

Thinking about it, which I haven't been able to stop doing all day long, has brought back all those memories from my childhood. Not the sweet afternoons listening to stories from grammas who lived in the eighteen hundreds, but the misery of the confused and homesick forced to live out their days in terror.

Love

 

Human beings are the most complicated creatures. 

My outer shell says very little about who I really am. Inside I can be anyone.

Human love starts with what can be seen, but that is only the harbinger of all that follows. Like a balloon, its reality is only complete by what is inside.

Falling in love with the outside, only to be disappointed by the inside is all too common in our world while truly falling in love with the inside can be an amazing experience.

That being said, it is important to remember who that inside is.

Chances are the inside will slowly morph as the outside does, but that is not guaranteed, nor are they guaranteed to match. Which is probably why love does not have to follow any linear, or predictable course.

There are so many kinds of love and all of them have the potential to be forever if it is true. I have to love what is. Not what I hoped, wanted, thought, or believed and that is both intense and complex. 

Whether it is the parent's love for a child, a lover's love for a lover, or a friend's love for a friend, it can be unique, enduring and precious and I have to be true to its actuality if I want that to happen.

Helo pods

 

Life is like an etagere with many levels, nooks and crannies. Each one with possibilities for wonder. In this world of seek and find, I set out wondrous amethyst geodes in places where they can be found.

There is another who used to be here with me, but I can't find them right now, In my mind's eye I see them sitting under a Bodhi tree, deep in meditation. The vines grow through them and there is a melding of life so that when they rise, the helo pods lie beneath them. Like eggs, they are a new combination of plant and person. It is a miracle with unknown ramifications.

The one who gives me the geodes now asks me to retrieve them. People are not ready for any of this. 

I see the people far below me, on the other side of an enclosure, like a pen in the zoo. They are playing on the sandy shore of a river and a polar bear is swimming towards them. I try to warn them that this bear is not a pet, nor is it trained, but, like children they innocently await its arrival.

They are doomed in spite of their innocence and I can do nothing to help them.

Suddenly I long to be back in my world, hiding beautiful geodes on glass shelves, but the helo pods will be hatching soon and a new world order is about to begin.

Transformation

Once, as a younger person, I think I really believed the world revolved around me. Not consciously of course, but in actuality. I expected things to go a certain way, be a certain way, feel a certain way, and when they didn't? I was sad, or hurt, disappointed, or even in despair.

Not that I believed in happily ever after. Oh no! That was for fairy tales.

To a point. 

Still, there was the dream, the expectations, the constant flow of television and movies showing me smiling people with straight teeth, blonde hair, and smiley faces, driving cool cars and living in nice houses without any hint that someone had to work to pay the bills, clean the houses, care for the lawns, teach the children.

Life was a series of small problems with an occasional tragedy thrown in that always turned out for the best. For me. Or I believed it should have been.

I don't believe that any more.

Now I believe that life flows out from me, a constant stream of possibilities that turn out one way or another, depending on what I really believe and do. Not what I wish, or dream necessarily, but what I "REALLY" believe. 

I'd like to say I believe in happily ever after, but you can't pull the wool over fate's eyes. Lip service just doesn't pack the punch that true believers do. I know some things will work and others will not. I know there is an end date on nearly everything and I also know that nothing is ever really gone. It is only transformed into something else.

That's certainly not a fool proof recipe for happiness, but it comes closer than other things for me.

Bliss

 

Joseph Campbell called it bliss, but that is only one specific way of looking at it.

It is that, but it is so much more.

It is what fills you, surrounds you, inundates you.

It is what you had in the womb on a scale humans seldom dare to dream of. 

You don't earn it, or deserve it. You can't make it, or own it.

You fall into it and it becomes a part of you, regulating the beating of your heart, the spinning of your thoughts, the space around you. It is an awakening of all your senses and understanding.

You do not own it. You cannot buy it. You really have no control over it except to open yourself and accept it when you become aware that it IS.

You may only get glancing experiences, but that is enough. And you may be swallowed whole by it without even realizing it.

However it comes to you, it goes beyond understanding into being.

Betrayal

 

Most relationships are based on trust, although I suppose they could be based on anything.

Need comes to mind. Once upon a time, marriages were a thing of need in a world that required much of either person, especially if they had children. That is true even today when most of us do not have to hunt our food or make our bread and clothing.

And I believe it is need that takes over when a relationship is not built on trust. We stay together, or stay with someone who does not fulfill more than physical needs if we feel we cannot do that alone.

Such relationships take their toll, especially if they are built on betrayal. 

Not being able to trust the person we live with destroys extemporaneous joy. It dims hope. It casts a pall over everything else.

Betrayal is perhaps the most enduring horror that exists. It creates a situation that says nothing is as it seems and the need to discriminate between truth and lies becomes a way of life that can harden the heart of even the gentlest of people over time.

It's a good day

 

After having a delayed and really unpleasant reaction to my first COVID vaccine, I went back to the doctor yesterday. She rearranged my medicine, prescribed a new allergy medicine and told me to hang in there.

Today, I rose from the first full night of sleeping in my own bed since probably last April. I woke up off and on, but never had to move to my recliner in the living room in order to breathe, or stop coughing.

Today was an almost normal day! It was warm enough to open the windows and go out in just a sweatshirt.

I took the bedroom fanlight apart and cleaned it all, then put it back together. I broke a bulb off in the socket and was able to fix that, then I wiped down the stove and ran errands in the car. I called my doctor to straighten out a problem with the pharmacy, fixed my easel, made a box for my paints and helped my daughter move chairs to her car that she is taking with her to Phoenix in June.

Who would ever guess that such homely things could mean so much, or be so welcome!

That's my boy!

I have always felt it is important to have some kind of musical outlet available, so I made sure each of my children took piano lessons and learned to play another instrument.

My daughter did better than I imagined with the piano, but did not take to the clarinet at all.

My middle son excelled at nearly everything he attempted and even had a double major including performance in college. 

My youngest son stuck with the piano and earned a gold cup in competition, then went on to play the trombone. He played that trombone with gusto and had the best decorated instrument in the junior high Christmas concert, but he appeared to be rather tone deaf. 

It never stopped him, though.

As an adult he taught himself guitar and even played songs in public that he wrote for his wife twice. He met me in Knoxville, Tennessee and played (and sang) Will you still need me when I'm 64 for my 64th birthday. It was so sweet, it melted my heart.

His wife represents musicians and he has played with many of them at social gatherings. I have always admired his enthusiasm, but never been overwhelmed by his voice.

Until today!

Today he called and sang and played for over an hour and a half for me and he was magnificent. I'm not sure what happened, but he has found his voice! Playing covers and even his own work, he entertained me and left me stunned. 

The guitar was strummed, picked and plucked in the most wonderful ways and his voice rang true throughout the morning. He says he thinks it's easier to play over the phone. I think it is unimaginable how much better he is after all these years.  I would go to a concert if he gave one and never believe this was the same little boy who played his trombone like a flat kazoo.

 

Responsive

 

I had my first Covid shot on Monday around noon. 

All went well. At first. I thought I was home free until Thursday night.

Feeling tired, achy and short of breath, I went to bed and woke up with a low grade fever.

It seems side effects can show up much later than the next day, but the nurse says the good news is that this means the shot is working.

Today I was nauseous and the fever was even lower.

None of these things are unbearable, but they do make me wonder what will happen when I get the second shot.

Six weeks

 

January 23, I asked if anyone wanted some very nice chairs and my daughter said she did. She said they would come pick them up in a couple of days. They just live fifteen minutes away.

Since then I have added a beautiful 6 by 8 rug and a very sturdy step stool. She wants those too. 

The trouble is that tomorrow is March 4th. and nothing has been picked up yet.

Some people might say, "So what? The chairs were already in your apartment, so what difference does it make?"

The answer is: a lot!

I don't like clutter and I live in a one bedroom apartment. I have half as many clothes as I have space for. I have empty cupboards and drawers. Minimalism becomes increasingly important to me as I age.

I wish I had never offered these to my daughter, but they are so nice and she doesn't have tons of nice things. Had I just placed a free ad in our local garage sale ads, this stuff would all be gone. I could have even sold it!

She swears they will come get it next week. I did finally tell her how important it is to me that it be gone, but I am struggling to remain polite and kind.