Tag Archives: time

Early Morning Wishes

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Getting hit with an acute cancer diagnosis in the middle of the summer when I would much rather be selling amazing jewelry, meeting people, going out to dinner, and spending time with friends, has knocked me on my butt. My days right now, usually, involve sitting like a deity in my cozy bed, leaning against various sizes and configurations of pillows, with my trusty hot water bottle by my side.

This morning, I got up and grabbed Oscar and walked the loop around our property. I am feeling the need to mark time: to mark days that are passing so fast. How is it the 30th of August? This has been going on now for almost two months; two months ago, I sat at Blundt’s Pond in Lamoine with friends and felt…funny.

Nothing feels funny right now. This is one of the challenges of the moment: brave faces and all. I love when people come to see me and it it truly is sustaining me right now; this love force that I feel from friends and family. It is so amazing; I imagine it as this big pink fluffy cloud-spiderweb with little sparkles in it everywhere. It is carrying me through this most terrifying experience. I talked to my mom last night, asking if she is going to counseling to deal with this as no one knows what is going to happen and it has only been a few years since my dad’s death. I don’t think she quite got the message, but I will try again. It feels so odd to just not know what the next week, two weeks, a month, will bring. As my friend Meg said yesterday, this cancer feels angry and it moves fast. It is scary to feel there is a being in your body, totally out of your control, messing with your everything.

I have been wanting to write more here, on a more regular basis, but have been struggling with energy and focus. I am on a lot of pain medication, too, and the brain fog of opiates is real! We were staying with Erica and Aaron this week in Boston, and he got so upset when he saw the Fentanyl patches in my box of pharmaceuticals. I had to tell him not to be scared, that it is medicine when it is used properly. Fentanyl freaks people out. My pain specialist, Patrick the Angel, just upped my dose yesterday so I will have to really work on focusing from now on.

That’s something I can ask my care team to help with: how to keep focused on Life while treating for cancer. It is much harder than I had thought, this journey. Having cancer is unlike any other sickness I have ever had. It sucks!!! You heard it here first. But, people are super nice, more nice than usual, so that is a perk.

I miss creating things as that has fallen by the wayside lately. I have to get back into that groove, too, in whatever way is manageable. One of the chemo options given to me gives people almost-permanent neuropathy, and I said no because I am an artist and I must be able to create things; it is part of who I am. My friend Ferry wrote to me and said that even as Matisse lay dying and was not able to pick up a paintbrush, he had a team of mentees cutting paper, painting, and arranging pieces right to the end, and that would be me! I have to print that text out and put it somewhere.

There is so much ephemera, so much detritus of our little lives, lingering in corners, piles on tables, the back edges of bookshelves. What makes up a life?

Wishes –

  • my edema in my legs begins to go down and it becomes more comfortable to walk
  • my appetite stays pretty strong so i can have the calories i need to stay well
  • i am my kindest, best, most authentic self with everyone i meet

Gratitudes –

  • Cody – despite some hiccups along the way, he has become the most amazing caregiver and I would be lost without him
  • Friends and family who bring food so we don’t have to think about cooking, even though I miss cooking
  • The pink spiderweb-cloud of love that surrounds me everywhere!

5am – My Life Just Changed

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It is 5am on Wednesday morning. I have been up for about forty minutes, and then I just decided that some people just wake up at 5am, so why not be like those people today? Pain kept me awake alot last night, because I mis-calculated my pain medicine regimen and didn’t take a pill when I should because I didn’t want to sit up for 30 minutes waiting for it to be digested. Ho hum!!!! Here I am, at 5am.

Pain has been the most consistent feature of this cancer so far, although I don’t know if I am experiencing pain because of cancer cells, or because my lungs are surrounded by liquid that is swelling and pushing against them and against my ribcage. I am hoping for the latter, and that we can figure something out to reduce the pressure. I miss sleeping on my side, all snuggled up in bed with my husband, dog, and sometimes, a cat.

Last Friday I was diagnosed with a rare cancer called Mucinous Adenocarcinoma with Signet Ring Features. It is pretty funny since I am a jeweler, and I am experiencing the cancer cells that are shaped like pretty little rings from King Arthur’s Court. I am not sure what those little cells do in particular and need to do some more reading, but I get easily overwhelmed by Dr Google. Right now, as I write, I am moving a hot water bottle around my torso, getting relief from achiness. It works well, but I wonder if there is such a thing as a warming vest? (Just Googled – that’s a yes).

Last week I was diagnosed with cancer. I have cancer. I keep repeating that to myself and it sounds weird every time. I have cancer. I have cancer? What?

When people tell you that you have cancer, they speak really softly and nicely. They treat you kindly wherever you go (especially the pharmacists). What they don’t do is move nearly as fast as you want them to in finding a treatment plan that is going to work and make you feel better. That could happen ANY DAY, by the way. My first appointment is in two weeks. Two. Long. Weeks. What will I do with all of that time? Two weeks of waiting, two weeks of being patient.

Two weeks of writing? Two weeks of drawing? Two weeks of sewing? Two weeks of — anything. Perhaps during these doldrums of time when I am awake with achy-ness and pushing my achy bits against a hot water bottle, I can think about what I would like to do with this time. All of a sudden, I feel that time is ticking, time counts, time is fleeting.

How does one know what to do? Do I get angry? Sad? Vengeful? Wistful? Regretful? I spent the other night exploring regret and plumbing its depths. Do I do the same with the other emotions? It all feels exhausting and confusing and —- futile. But also, not. It is also eminently precious.

Goddammit.

I want to buy a new set of sheets because of all the time I am spending in bed. I ask myself: should I do this? Is this a ridiculous want? And then – why does it even matter? Because I have CANCER. Jeezum.

My life just changed.

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It was dark. We had cooked lamb chops, “good lamb chops” that she had gotten from somewhere like Central Market. We cooked them on the giant, beautiful, expensive Viking range in Tina’s kitchen. Tina was out of town so she was staying in the big house and I went to stay with her. We cooked the lamb chops, 3 minutes per side and then two to finish them off, and I think we made a salad but I don’t remember. We drank light French red wine out of tiny beautiful glasses and I think it was our last dinner together.

I helped her up the stairs; she was sleeping in Tina’s room on the second floor of the old house. You had to walk up a tight, tourney staircase, so I walked her up and spent time with her in the bathroom as she got ready to go to bed. She washed her face and put lotion on her hands and brushed her teeth. She was so tiny; tinier then than she had ever been before. No hair but still that beautiful, beautiful face, that beautiful beautiful spirit that shone through everyday. I got her into bed; all the sheets were white, the walls were white, everything in that room was very light and I think she really loved sleeping in there.

The day we shaved her head, it was in that room, too; I think she had some sort of connection with that space. With how high it was above the ground, with how open and airy it was. She always loved a light-filled space. I looked in her eyes as I was sitting in bed with her. I could see the light of the lamp reflected in her eyes, and there were tiny white plates suspended in the black centers of her eyes. They almost looked like those glints of light that teenagers put in their sketches of characters when they’re first learning how to draw cartoons: these tiny points of light that are supposed to tell the viewer that their eyes are twinkling. But in this case her eyes weren’t twinkling, those little plates were matte, deep, solid somehow: they collected the light. I hadn’t noticed them before and took a while to stare at them and try to figure out what they might be.

After she went to sleep I went back downstairs and called Vonda and told her that Maryann’s eyes looked strange: that there was something floating in them. At the time I thought maybe it could be something to do with medication or cancer, I just wasn’t sure. All I knew was that there were tiny plates floating in her eyes. Later, I learned that those tiny plates were ammonia crystals floating in her eyes, teaching us that her liver was failing very quickly. She had been on chemo for so long, at that point almost 16 years, that the chemo had changed her liver from the sponge it’s supposed to be to something resembling a rock; nothing passed through, nothing was filtered out, and so the ammonia that builds up in our bodies naturally, everyday over time, had begun to build up in her body and was reflecting through her eyes.

Today I’ve been reflecting on my own current illness which also has some liver markers going on. I’ve been really thinking about Maryann and that time when her liver stopped working. Maryann is in my thoughts all the time right now; I am convinced she is around me a lot and sometimes I feel her here just watching me and taking a gaze and seeing what’s going on. But this time is different. I feel like she’s just out of reach, but she’s trying to tell me something but I don’t know what it is.

As I lay here on my bed having a day that feels like a setback, after watching a rainstorm, I’m just curious about everything. What am I supposed to learn? When I think about my dear friend Maryann, I miss her so much, but she’s right here. It’s so strange and hard to figure out.

If I could ask her and she could answer I would say what are you trying to tell me Maryann? 

Lyme Diaries – It Might Not Be Lyme

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As I sit here in my living room, lots of little birds are chirping out the back French doors, heralding another day, and the morning traffic hums from the road. I don’t mind the traffic, just the engine brakes of the trucks that barrel down a few times a day; our driveway is at the bottom of two hills, and they really go for the brake noise if they are going too fast. Almost everyone is going too fast.

Yesterday I went to the hospital for a CT scan of my abdomen, which had been ordered by my doctor when she said, on Friday, that she “officially did not like this” – this being my set of symptoms that include: whole leg edema, stomach pain, and radiating back pain. I thought I had pancreatitis, thanks to Google. Yesterday I met the amazing radiology tech, James, and he walked me through my first CT scan. My friend Nicole, who also is a radiology tech, walked me through the steps a few days earlier. I was anticipating something that was alot worse than it was. It was quick and almost painless, although the feeling of the contrast going through your body is a weird one; hot, moving, liquid-y , with a spicy taste in your mouth. After the CT scan, I stood awkwardly in the front of our small, rural hospital, trying to decide if I wanted to go to the ER or not. Nieve, gatekeeper of MDI Hospital, asked me if I had another appointment. I told her the source of my quandary. She said, “only you can make that decision. But if you want to, I will call them to come up and get you”. I nodded and started to cry, and soon after, a young nurse assistant named Zabet appeared in the elevator. Zabet is an EMT and a part-time massage therapist, and she wears a mask all the time, as if we are still in COVID times. I suppose we are.

I went to the small ER, a cluster of comfortable purple recliners in a small room divided by green and white curtains. A funny nurse named Dustin with whacky disheveled hair came over and took notes on two sides of a post-it and made me laugh. He sent Dan, the doctor, all of maybe 25 years old, seasonal doctor from U Penn, over, and we talked. Dan somehow managed to be serious without being officious: he was serious, but he listened, and he was kind. We moved into a room and I laid down on the bed. My pain was starting to creep in as I hadn’t taken anything since early in the morning, and it was now noon.

Hot Tip – if you get a CT scan and then immediately to go to the ER, they read your CT scan in about 5 minutes! Dan came into my room and said some words that were a little bit ominous but mostly supportive, “there is something wrong with you, and you aren’t crazy”. He then told me that the scan showed “a lot” of enlarged and inflamed lymph nodes, indicative of something called Lymphadenopathy. Then he said that this indicates the possibility of lymphoma.

In that moment, I time traveled to three-ish years ago, when I went to Texas Oncology with Mary Ann to see her doctor, who she loved, the doctor who always wore tall high heels and power suits even when she came to see you in the hospital at 5am. She was supposed to get chemo that day, but we had a meeting with her doctor first. It was the day when her doctor said that chemo was no longer working, which we sort of knew because her belly was very swollen and she was jaundiced. We at least knew something was off. I reached out to her to hold her hand and she slapped me, not hard. She looked at me in fear and acceptance, and said, “I can accept this”. Yesterday, I heard her speak and in my mind I also said, “I can accept this”.

There was a bright yellow chair next to my hospital bed; the yellow was the same yellow as a pair of her funny Birkenstock clogs that she used to line up in a neat row outside the door of her apartment. I said, “I wish Mary Ann was here”. My mom, who was with me in the room, said, “because of her experiences?”. I said, “No! Because she would make me laugh!”

A few hours later, I was shot full of pain medicine and had had a chest x-ray and was scheduled for another CT scan the next day. I love the radiology tech, so thought it was a great opportunity to hang with him again, and he said the same thing when he came to check in on me. We went home at around 3, and I slept for a lot of the rest of the day. They prescribed oxycodone and laxatives (what a combo!). They work for pain but they make my stomach hurt. They told me to keep taking advil and tylenol, every 6 hours (I have to take them every 4 and am hoping I am not wrecking something in the process). My doctor called at 730 and said she had shown my paperwork to her superiors, and they were elevating my case and referring me to Dana Farber, the creme-de-la-creme cancer institute in Boston. She asked if that was all right, I said, of course! And then I cried.

When I went to the ER yesterday, I didn’t even think that this was a possibility. But here we are. My poor husband is so worried, I stayed eerily calm until 24 hours had passed and then I spent a lot of the next day crying, but that is ok. My trusty steed, Oscar, never leaves my side and all the friends who I have talked with tell me how loved I am and how I am not alone. I haven’t been able to go to the gallery all week due to a combination of exhaustion, edema, and pain. I want to go to work, and I am hoping we can get some symptom management down so that I can. I miss it.

I miss not having a stomachache, and I miss my appetite. I miss red wine in the evenings, and rose in the afternoons. I miss walking at a fast pace, listening to my heart rate increase. I miss feeling like my life force is strong. When I get these things back, I swear I will never take them for granted again.

Today I go to the doctor again, and on Tuesday I get to meet a random doctor who will read the results of my scans. I hope he is as nice as everyone else has been so far. Let’s put that out there.

Love, Patience

Ho hum

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Here are the difficulties of mid-life. I will be 45 in a few months, and my husband will be 47. Today I was telling a story about jewelry school; a short story about a stone seller on a motorcycle with a backpack full of gemstones, and I realized how much I missed a sense of freedom.

Here I am, almost 45. I “own” a house, which means I pay a mortgage on it every month, and insurance, and taxes. I pay the same in my own life, and try to save money. I work at a friend’s gallery in the hopes of taking it over in a year or so, but all the while knowing that I am not earning what I need to earn to have the life I want. I feel like sometimes I am living in a limbo of the future: waiting. Why am I doing that when I could be actively pursuing the present? But I am doing that, too, going to work every day and enjoying it despite a greatly reduced salary. It feels unsustainable, and like something will have to shift. It’s like I want to live here, but living here is so difficult because there are so few people to sustain the place. So few good jobs, and a seasonal culture that tempts you to participate in it because you have so much time to yourself in the dark and cold days.

I don’t want to complain, and don’t think I am doing that, exactly. My husband who used to be happy and silly is hard and angry now, so upset about something I don’t understand. It’s like the last year has changed him into a stranger; someone who seeks to find something wrong with things. I seek to find things that are right, and to be ok with things if they aren’t. I get mad about the big issues, but all in all, I am happy with my daily home life. I don’t understand why he isn’t, and I don’t understand what is making him so angry.

His coworker was murdered a year and two months ago, and that has something to do with it, although I won’t know what for a long time; that kind of thing takes a long time to process. He became so emotionally entangled with his boss, a man who outwardly seems friendly and engaged, but inwardly has no capacity to talk about hard things. It is as if C feels that he is responsible for his boss’ emotions, when that is impossible. When he said he wanted to go to another, different job, the man asked him to stay repeatedly, and non-sensically, saying things like “I will make all your dreams come true!”. What does that even mean? Why would he say something like that to his employee; it is so manipulative. So is never speaking about the employee who was murdered, acknowledging her death, or offering support if support was needed.

I feel compassion and care for my husband, of course I do. In some moments he seems clear again, with a plan. Sometimes it seems like he wants the future to be exactly what he wants, and doesn’t think about what I might want, and how those things can go together. Sometimes, I wish we had never come here, and sometimes, I am thankful that all these things are coming out. Most of the time, lately, I am just very confused about the state of the big world and the state of my world, and how my world feels so different and off. I am thankful for the experience, but wish it could be different than it is.

Bah! An impossible want; to know what it is one is supposed to do with one’s life!?! How do you ever know?

Up Out of a Deep Well

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Waiting.

Time.

Circumstance.

Change.

The decade of the 40s has been interesting because I have experienced many moments of clear reflection. I like to think of them as plateaus of understanding; it’s as if my mind’s eye is climbing mesa after mesa, seeing clearly out to a horizon that, beforehand, I could not see.

Maine has always been a place where I am an artist, first. In Texas, I was always a teacher, first, and had been for years. I am beginning to appreciate the practicality of that choice of vocation, as i am really struggling here with earning a lot less than what I earned in Texas. But, I digress. As an artist, first, I am embarking on an adventure of making more work, finishing a writing project, and hoping to take over a friend’s longstanding artistic business. It is a time of big leaps, and I am waiting for my confidence to catch up.

The deep well, I think, is a series of experiences that have emboldened an already highly-developed struggle with self-confidence. People tell me this struggle isn’t obvious to others, but to people who know me really well, it is clear. The deep well of circumstances like: teaching under-resourced students for almost twenty years, moving a lot from place to place, being afraid of commitment and how that impacts decision-making, focusing more on achievement over joy and balance and contentment, the death of my dad, the death of one of my best friends, teaching during the pandemic, discovering two half-brothers at the age of 45, and landing again in a place that I love but is very challenging to make a good living, have all resulted in this moment of clarity. Ah ha! Here I am, after all these years.

I find it hard to internalize that we are where we are because of everything that came before. But, to me, standing on tonight’s metaphysical mesa and staring at a new horizon, this explanation is the only one that makes sense. What now must be is a decision as to what to do next. I feel in some ways that I am taking huge risks in waiting and seeing if the jewelry store dream becomes reality; most of these risks are financial and right now, financial risks seem bad. On the other hand, with our country in the throes of the changes it is experiencing, maybe this is the time to grab the dreams by the hands and jump. I don’t know? I know what I want, which is to own or co-own the jewelry store, be able to save money and pay for health insurance without total panic every month, take a month or two off in the winter and go somewhere nice and sunny, to be able to buy the land around us and run a campground for people in the summer, to pay off our house within 15 years; all of these are the dreams.

But the waiting, the realizing, the digging oneself out of a series of experiences to find meaning within them; it is hard and it is drudgery sometimes, and sometimes it is joyful, like tonight.

I am still sick with anaplasmosis and Lyme disease. I think that something about these illnesses forces me to think about a lot of things while I am sick; they are thoughtful illnesses, to be sure. This experience reminds me of when I got sick my senior year of high school and could do little else but be sick and hope I would get better sometime. I spent a lot of time sitting on the back porch, thinking about the meaning of life. I think I have some sort of understanding of the meaning of life, for now anyway, but I am thinking about a lot of other things. I think about the preciousness of life and time, how fast it all goes, what I want the next ten years to look like and be like, and what I can do to make the world a better place, a little at a time. It is an active time, this thinking time.

Last year, one year ago yesterday, the world lost an amazing person in Kate Shuster. She was a mentor and a friend and a shero and an inspiration, and she is very missed. She left behind lots of memories, photos, and writings, but her death impacted me so much and especially reminded me of the precious nature of our time on Earth. She made a mark, a series of them, in fact, and she left Earth very quickly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When she died last year, I went and sat on the edge of the ocean and thought about her, and Mary Ann, and Ken, and John, and Meredith; all the friends who I had lost before I wanted them to go. Sometimes I see them or hear them or feel them around the edges of this reality and I wonder what they think or want us to see or understand. I guess we will never know that, and just have to keep on doing the best we can.

GGMS

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Have you ever had a grand realization, one that knocks your metaphysical socks off and clears the air inside your mind and to which you answer, yes (?). Gus Garcia Middle School, 2007-2009, second and third years of my teaching career. As my friend and I texted about a few weeks ago, Gus Garcia Middle School will always be depressing.

Gus Garcia Middle School is also where and when I started to run, away, toward, maybe both? Like him, I chose to run rather than to face the music. No, I didn’t leave two children behind, but I, so like my dad, chose to run away and toward something else. It all is becoming so much clearer now.

Looking back is hard, as this time period was now almost twenty years ago, and that is hard to believe. I was an adult then, I was married to my first husband, and I owned my first house. I was trying to remember how it all started, but I must go further back.

It all started at Porter Middle School, during the fall of 2006, when I was hired as a long term sub in a science classroom with a wall of windows and deep sinks and a scary science closet that was filled with treasures. It was the beginning of my adulthood, that year. It was the year I bought the first house, for $106,000 from my friend Lyndsy. It had no central air conditioning or heating. The dishwasher didn’t quite fit in the kitchen and always shimmied. One of the counters’ edges was cut at an insanely sharp triangular angle. In the summer, it was hot, and in the winter, it was cold. It was a long house on a long lot, it had a shaded, covered rear porch that was lovely despite having a leaky roof caused by branches poking through the corrugated (cardboard?) material that made it up. The backyard also sharpened to a point in the back. There was Austin city property on one side of it; an easement for power lines that went in between two fences. It had a carport and a nice tree in the yard. It was the house in which I started gardening in earnest, growing all kinds of things in a big veggie patch in the back and native plantings in the front. I made paths of a sort, and a symbolic gate in the front which I modeled after a Torii gate and was very happy when it actually worked and fit together. In later years, when looking at the house on the internet, I found the gate to be gone. That was ok. Most everything else remained.

At Porter Middle School I ended up becoming a real teacher after several grueling months of terrible classes that had little bearing on real life as a teacher. I learned how to be with kids and how to ask them to learn science. They made me laugh a lot and I realized I liked that and this alot. At the end of that year, the school would close and become a new school: Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. I remember watching the staff of the new school walk the halls of the old one and wondering who they were. Little did I know that I would work with and for them many years later. At some point during that year, we were all informed that if we wanted to move to Gus Garcia Middle School, the newest school in Austin ISD, we could. Most of us did, although a few stayed in south Austin or retired. I remember touring that new building when it was a shell: such hopefulness. I remember touring it when it was painted and I wondered about blue, yellow, and orange, but did agree they were bright. The campus looked like a community college. They had pods for each grade level, color coded, with work rooms for the team of teachers in that pod. They all had copiers and computers! These were the days before laptops. They put flat screen TVs in each classroom, but forgot to order chairs for the science classrooms.

This was the beginning, and what follows is important, I think. When I came back to Austin ISD in 2015, the man from HR that I spoke with said, “oh, you were at Garcia.” I said, “I opened Garcia”. He said, “those years were hard.” I said, “yes”.

Let’s dive in.

What Are You Really Thinking About Right Now?

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I keep thinking about the bigger picture.

At night, I walk on my driveway and look up at thousands of stars, and every night I try to find the Big Dipper. When I do, I then look for Orion, the Little Dipper, and some planets. I find it soothing, and so I talk to them, making wishes for their help on this tiny floating blue dot. I know that they are so much bigger than me, and that there might be tiny floating blue dots orbiting them, and probably nobody there (if there is someone) even knows that I exist. Somehow though, every night I see them as this web of lights, connected across space, protecting me on Earth.

Life in the United States right now is very strange. I am convinced that the government is trying to make everyone afraid and divided. I think that the powers that be are using social media to do this, and there are now so many channels that can capture your attention.

I currently use Instagram and Facebook; I just deleted X because I found it mildly horrifying. I think I am about to delete Facebook, though, as I think my brain isn’t big enough for two social media accounts. It is filled with other things like plants, stars, sewing projects, and making jewelry.

Today is April 21st and it was sunny and cool today. The sun shone on the ocean and it twinkled and sparkled. Through a window, it almost looked like if you jumped in, it would be refreshing. Of course, it would actually kill you. Oh, Ocean – you’re a beast. So powerful; in reality, the most powerful thing on Earth. What a mirage of safety that ocean; birthplace of us all, so wildly different in different places. Where I grew up, in Houston, the water is always around 70-80 degrees. Here it is in the 40s right now and would make you hypothermic in minutes. And yet, this water, this cold water, is warming faster than any other body of water on Earth. All the while the climate is growing cooler, losing 1 degree of warmth over the last 11 years.

A bigger picture – a small and short life. I am about to turn 45. I just started hormone replacement therapy and now wear a tiny patch about the size of a dime on my stomach. I put one on twice a week and am hoping it makes me feel better and gives me relief from night sweats and hot flashes, brain fog, and a crazy hip pain that comes and goes. I am sure there are other things, too, but those are the ones I am most aware of. In a few years, my body will have changed again, as I transition into the second half of my short life.

I wonder why people in government would choose to do bad things, knowing how short their lives are, too, and how if they did good, more people would remember them after they’ve died. But then again, some people think they will never die; they are so afraid of its unknown.

I go back to work next week which is exciting; I am looking forward to seeing people and remembering how to do all the little things that make the gallery work. Every day I look outside waiting for leaves; still waiting. It’s ok. They are coming. There is a fox here who is eating my chickens as if she has access to take-out whenever she wants. There is also a porcupine who climbs the white pine trees at night, scratching with its big nails like a giant spiky cat. I wonder what other wild animal will come soon, the third in the series.

Writing has helped me understand that it is time to detach from the world of the internet and attach to the world of real life; plants, animals, sky, trees, making things to reflect those things back at themselves. I have many seedlings ready to put in the ground. I have already planted roses and made new flower beds for this year. The sound of the road at the end of the driveway is loud sometimes, but the land is pretty. We cleared out a streambed yesterday and planted dwarf willow trees at the stream edge. The apple trees are about to bloom, I think. I can’t wait to go swimming.

I have been listening to Radio Paradise a lot lately. It is really great; maybe you will like it too. I am off to go eat a girl dinner and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tomorrow is a new day? I think? I mean, it is. How will it feel tomorrow?

Planet of the Apes

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Jumbled.

Out of focus.

Lack of focus.

Scared.

Inward-silent-screaming.

Panic?

Doubt?

Should I…..?

Should I liquidate my assets and move somewhere like Thailand or an island off Greece ? Somewhere where the weather is good most of the year and no one cares about its mineral rights or geopolitical power?

I live in a cold place. Maine is about 20 degrees during the day right now, and we have had a snowy winter. It is beautiful here and very, very quiet. It is the end of the line, geographically speaking; we are about 2.5 hours from the Canadian Border. It isn’t far enough away; I feel the feelings encroaching, and the impacts are just barely far away. Yesterday I bought an $11 roll of aluminum foil. Being that aluminum is the 3rd most abundant element on earth, I found it troubling and I then bought it anyway. From now on I will be washing my aluminum foil so that it can be reused. You can’t catch me!

There are so many things I wish to be writing about, but instead I am working on quilts, and walking, and looking at snow, and looking at stars, listening to music, and trying to keep the loneliness and fear at bay. It is very hard. I am a highly emotional person. Sometimes I feel that my heart lives outside my body, and so it bumps into everything.

Right now I am off work for the most part, except when I go to caretake a house that is in my care. This means I get to sleep in everyday, and take my dog for walks, and make toast in the morning. I try to only read the news 2 or 3 times a day. I try to not listen to anything but my favorite podcasts. I try to find little things to appreciate, and I do, everyday. I make new recipes and call friends. I am worried that I am turning into a weird person who channels anger into making quilts. My connection to metalworking seems to be waning, and what does that mean?

I find myself wandering alot lately, as if I am in fog. I don’t understand this. I have so many skills and so many ideas, so many topics to write about and make things about, and yet, I don’t seem to do it. I work at night, sewing tiny pieces of fabric together. I am making a quilt about anger and about seeing. When I start making a block I am mad as hell, and by the end, the anger has dissipated, so I think it is working. The block I am making is called the Eye of God, and the eye is definitely aimed at my poor dead dad, the one who abandoned two twin boys back in 1968 and impacted the lives of many people afterward; his grief became a wrecking ball that just never gave out.

There are other wrecking balls around, swung by other men who are, no doubt, lying about something very big, so sad and empty that all they can do is destroy and hurt. It is an old story, but I am tired of it all. Tired of the actions of men, chimpanzees swinging their dicks around, holding automatic weapons, not thinking about everyone behind them that has to pick up the pieces. My current interpretation of the patriarchy is that is tired and cranky (hangry maybe? hangry for actual human connection and permission to be…..) and, like a tired and cranky child, it is striking out at any hand that comes near. Our Vice President says to Germany and other partners in Europe to be cooler to the Alt-Right parties who negate how bad those Nazis were, our President lets an unelected person have access to critical data systems that hold information like the fact that I moved here from England sometime in the 1980s on the coattails of a man who was running away from his poor decisions, his anger, his family, everyone who could have comforted him and forgiven him. He ran to New York City and we took a helicopter around the Statue of Liberty and we never went back. Smash.

It is no secret that I did not vote for our current president, nor will I ever support a man who I knew best from his episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous“, a show I loved as a kid. I cannot support this person and I don’t understand how anyone can, but I am clearly wrong as the majority of voters did indeed support him. I wonder, though….will they in a few months?

I keep thinking about a marble running down a hillside or a dune. The marble starts at the top, shiny and beautiful, and starts wending its way down a hillside. As it moves, it carves a shallow trench in its wake, perhaps it hits other tiny pebbles, runs over grass or shells. When it reaches the bottom, no matter its small stature in an of itself, its actions have permanently (or impermanently, as after all, everything is impermanent) changed the surface of the Earth. People who think that the actions of the president will only impact the 2 million or so people he wants to fire in the federal government and will not hurt them are delusional. The marble that is mass layoffs in our government will pick up, roll over, carve out, and forever alter so many unpredictable aspects of our life in the United States. Only time will tell.

I am going to work on forcing myself to write here, to document. I have so many things to say and stories to write down. I want to write about meeting my half-brothers and how wonderful they are and how excited I am to meet them. I want to write more about Mary Ann and taking care of Cody’s grandma, Maw Maw. I want to write about my volunteering for the local hospice group and trying to find my way again after losing my confidence over the last three years. It is a long and great journey, so much to say! I cannot let the fear of the present moment erase these experiences and these stories.

Wish me luck, thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

Free Weight

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For awhile, I looked in the mirror and I didn’t recognize myself; who was that, staring back at me with little wrinkles everywhere, eyelids that are changing, a worried brow, gray hair? For a while, I knew that it was, indeed me, but a me that somehow had changed. Now, they have come together and I see the same old face in my current new face.

This blog has existed for about ten years, and so much has happened in those interim ten years. For a long time, I was good at writing regularly, at night, by myself, in my house. But then ten years ago I got together with the man I am now married to, and my evening behaviors changed. To me, writing is a solitary act. I really don’t like to do it when anyone is home, even with the door closed. I somehow feel that it is important not to be interrupted when channeling whatever this is.

Here I am today, writing stream of consciousness style, so please bear with me. Today is my friend Mary Ann’s birthday and she would have been 46. She died two years ago. She visits a lot, but we can’t talk anymore, and that is what I miss the most. I also miss talking to my dad, as we did during his last few years of life. We had had a lifetime of fights (since I was a teenager, so half a lifetime I guess), that we gave up sometime after I got married and we moved Maw Maw into our house after she had a stroke. Taking care of her made me realize that our lives are very finite and we can leave the planet oh so quickly. I vowed to never talk to my dad about anything important ever again, and we began talking all the time.

Today I am thinking about his first, secret-to-us family in England. What is weird about this iteration of thinking, after now knowing for about 2 months, is that I feel the most compassion for him that I have ever felt. I never could feel this compassion for him in life because he never told us about this thing, this majorly big issue in his life that explains so much. When I asked my aunts about him in 2017 and they told me they wouldn’t tell me, I thought all kinds of things.

I thought he had gotten someone pregnant and his parents were really mad. (Partially true)

I thought maybe he had gotten drunk and wrecked a car and his parents were really mad. (No)

I thought he had fought in Vietnam and had PTSD. (Not true; now we aren’t sure if he was ever over there, but he said he was, so……)

Basically all of the things I thought it could be were way more colorful and interesting than a breakup of a marriage in its infancy, and leaving the infants that came along with the young marriage behind, never to see them again. It’s just so damn sad.

Lately, sometimes, I get so sad. It’s like something is literally hanging around my neck with a weight. What’s in the weight? I don’t even know. Is it just me? Am I a melancholy baby after all? It would seem so. I used to be more fun though, I think. Why is this weight so heavy and how do I lift it? I don’t want to feel this sad and anxious all the time; emotions so overwhelming and a general feeling of no one liking me. And coupled with that, a crazy desire to keep everyone happy so that I don’t say things when I am angry or sad or irritated or when I need to. Those two things must be intertwined; some ouroboros that is.

Earlier I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Texas and we were talking about how reflective the 40s is. This decade is wild and whack. I don’t understand how the shift is perhaps a bit more money in the bank, or perhaps an investment (house) or something, and then people start to die? Right now, I think this trade off, this change, this phase, level-up, or whatever you want to call it, is bullshit.

I also accept that everyone dies and literally they have to die at some point. It just seems that it is weirdly becoming a regular part of life, and I am having to adjust to it and “deal” with it, and try to understand it and be at peace with it. One of the things I learned when Maw Maw lived with us is that death doesn’t scare me. I think I knew this, as I when I got very sick in high school and didn’t die, I think I chose to no longer be frightened of it and be open to it all the time. When Maw Maw was dying, a day that I haven’t written about yet, it was very weird and mysterious. Watching someone leave the planet “is NOT like in the movies” (I said this over and over at that time).

Why can I not seem to get out of thinking about Maw Maw, my Dad, Mary Ann, and my friend Kate (who died this past summer). I am shaken by Kate’s death; I always thought she’d end up working for the federal government and be interviewed on 60 Minutes or something. Mary Ann I just miss. My Dad I just miss. Those two were my phone people; I spoke to them almost every day. I haven’t had my phone people in over 2 years, and I miss them. Maw Maw I miss, but she makes me smile and laugh. She was old and she was ready to roll out. I just miss her, again, because it would be fun if she was here and we could watch a movie. They just seem to live in my mind right now; I am not sure what to do about that.

When I think of my Dad right now I just wish I could tell him that it’s ok, we know, and we just wish he would have told us because everything is fine. It happened so long ago, before he had even met my mom, and I know that no matter what happened, it was not an easy decision and I am sure he didn’t want to make it. My Aunt Margaret told me about his white wedding, and how beautiful it was, everyone in white dresses and my Aunt Helen was the flower girl. She told me she has photos somewhere and I so hope she can find them. I have a hard time imagining my dad as a 26 year old person. How was he ever that young?

I wish I could tell him that it’s ok because it is. It explains so much, almost everything. It explains why we came to the US, and why his family didn’t know that. It explains, perhaps, why we fought so much. Did he feel guilty every time he looked at me? Did he feel guilty all the time, ashamed, anxious, afraid, and did he transform those feelings into rage and anger? (Seems so). It seems so sad, what a waste of time and energy. My mom said that she would have welcomed the boys into the family, but who knows if they would have wanted that, or their mom. I know that with Cody’s situation with his baby mama, she was (metaphorically) driving the bus and made it extremely hard for him to see or have partial custody of his son. It took many thousands of dollars and hours of time to secure those rights. But, he did it, he chose to fight for them. Why didn’t my dad fight for his boys?

I can only imagine how sad he must have been, and that is how I have compassion for him. I wonder if he knew it wasn’t working when they were living in Scotland and found out they were pregnant. I wonder where they moved after that. Did they own their house or rent it? Was it near my grandparents or her parents or neither? How much was he working then, and doing what? I know that he was a cigarette salesman at one point down in Devon/Cornwall, but was that before when he first got back from Australia, or between Outward Bound and Noble Denton?

It is such a drag that I probably won’t know the answers to many of these questions. The tragedy of this story, or at least one of the big ones, is that the boys’ mum died the same year that he did. She died still with his last name, after all that time.

I feel better after writing a bit. Please bear with me as this all comes pouring out. I am so scared to let it, but it feels like a weight lifted when I do.

Grief, again. Grabbing hold of my heart and squeezing it in a vice. Some people describe grief as being shaken by a wild animal, but mine is a cold squeeze and I feel like I can’t scream out even though I want to. If I scream, someone might get mad at me for being too dramatic or sensitive or overly-emotional. If I scream, people might know and worry or be mad at me for making noises in quiet places. I said this to my therapist two weeks ago and just remembered it:

“If I look at it, then I may be sad forever.” Where does that come from? When I say it outloud or read it, I know that it is some part of my brain trying to trick me. I can’t be sad forever, and how would letting this out make me sadder? Perhaps it’s the weight? It doesn’t want to let go?