Every phone call from my mother began the same way: “Hi love! It’s only me!” (Those were dinosaur days, pre-caller ID.) I’d respond with truthful but exaggerated exasperation: “Yeah, Ma. Just the person I owe my life to, without whom I’d not exist!” We’d laugh, confirm that this call – as usual – came at a ridiculously inopportune time, then we’d slip into talk about everything and nothing. Toward her end, we’d circle back, two or three times.
Maybe this blog is a stand-in for those no-longer-possible phone calls, or just a long-overdue avenue for expression. I never wrote the autobiography my friends said should be titled “I Wake Up Talking,” but I do scribble a lot. I’m also a gatherer/keeper with a constant need to sort through things: My relationships with loved ones and the wider world, my emotions and memories, my stuff. I love to share, and if I don’t extend this to my thoughts, I might self-combust, end up a pile of salty ashes smoldering on one of the many pillows strewn across my well-loved bed. Three cats bereft, perplexed and pondering.
Now we wouldn’t want that, would we? So please indulge me as I expound on everything from society to sandwiches. I humbly hope you’ll stay with me through cyberspace. I don’t presume these musings are monumental; why should they be? After all, it’s only me.
I hate the summer. Too many people have died then. My father, June 8th; my mother, June 10th. Max, my mother’s late-in-life love, who made her feel she was his queen -- he died early June too. I can’t remember if it was the last day of July or the day before, that my husband John spiraled out of the sky. It’s true it was a long time ago, but still, you’d think I’d never forget the date of something like that.
It never dawned on me that, by planning to marry on a holiday devoted to memorializing the dead, I might be tempting fate.
But tempt fate I did, and fourteen months to the day I became a bride, I went from newlywed to widow.
I was lucky enough to audit Professor Reg McKnight’s creative writing class at UGA, and his mention of a former student whose story consisted entirely of questions has stuck with me for years.
I’d like to think I’m paying homage, but I’m just stealing the idea.
Will I be punished for my thievery? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act II, sc. 2
I’ve flown to distant continents, traversed the Andes and the Amazon; mostly, I’ve trudged upstairs and hauled my weary butt to bed. I’ve sought comfort under comforters and in the furry purr of cats.
“The most regretful people… are those… who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
Mary Oliver
Geez. Five years.
You could say, “Yes, I regret.” You could say, “I should have been.” Or you could ask yourself, like David Byrne, “My God! What have I done?”
I had a nice, long couch in the kitchen where I used to live, but here, there’s just enough space for a love seat.
Even for me, it’s too short to comfortably stretch out on, but that’s okay: there’s no dearth of spots for reclining in my comfortable, comforting home. When I found my two-seater at Restore for Habitat for Humanity, I overlooked its flaws: The price was right, and I intended to have it reupholstered and restrung. Oh well. Add that to the list of the undone.
Since Too-Big-to-Fail failed us so spectacularly, I don’t eat out that much anymore.
It’s not just the money; a bit of the hermit’s set in. It was easier when there was someone else to do the encouraging (and the driving), and certainly easier when I was already downtown, closing up shop for the evening. Ande would often meet me at Frontier: It was always best when the kids were with him too. We’d traipse just up the hill to Compadres, a huge Mexican place on the corner, where Davison’s department store once was. The store and the restaurant are long gone, and so much else is too.