Tag Archives: Beloved

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Hopes rise

Our Christmas plans are busily crashing and burning. I felt ill and tested covid positive two days before my daughter was due from her city. ALERT, ALERT, DIVERT! I called friends who agreed to pick her up at the airport and let her stay for the five days of isolation. I stay out of the car so the germs will die. I call her after her work on Friday. She takes it calmly and calls a friend to pick her up. I miss her, darn it, but well, I am not on a ventilator or dead. Doing well, right?

She stays with her friend. She plans to join me yesterday but then snow. School is canceled. She and her friend sensibly leave my car at the entrance to the ridge road the friend lives on. She has to use the chains anyhow because someone has slithered off the road right in front of my car. Still grateful, because they did not hit my car.

She makes it to my house, chains on. She heads downtown to Christmas shop but the store she wants is closed. I ordered her a present that needs to be picked up, but the pick up is Tuesday to Saturday. They don’t list a phone. I ordered it on Sunday and they had emailed “Pick up now” even though it’s not “open” on Sunday. I email back, “Can’t, covid!” Now I email again and say would they contact my daughter or me so she can pick up. They do, but well after she is home. Still grateful, because they are open today. Maybe we’ll get it!

My daughter has been looking forward to time with friends but the snow has screwed this up. Maybe to time with mom, too, but mom has Covid. I am eating upstairs, she is eating in the basement, and same with sleeping. We are both masking and everyone is sick of that. It’s cold outside and the band she wants to dance to cancels. She misses meeting a friend downtown because of chains and needing gasoline. I am still grateful. Not dead yet, right?

Now I have email from our flight saying, well, maybe we’ll go. We are supposed to fly later this week. It looks like the big storm will hit Chicago and Buffalo and Boston. Cross fingers as we head for Dulles. Might make it. We discuss going to Sea-Tac a day early but that would mean sleeping in the same hotel room and no, we aren’t going to do that. Friends say they CAN get us to the airport. Super grateful for those friends!

When things are going all awry and life seems like rather a mess, we do Happy Things. That is a check in at the end of the day where we list three Happy Things each. My son was having a miserable half way through the year first grade move when we started this. The thing is, they do not have to be VERY happy. They can be more along the lines of “No one has poured boiling oil over me today.” or “Not dead yet.” It’s complaining reframed and it can be very very funny. In first grade one of his Happy Things was “We did not have the pizza that tastes like cardboard for school lunch today.”

So my Happy Things yesterday were: “I am not on a ventilator! I am not dead! We have super nice friends who will take us two hours to the airport!” If you start low enough on the Happy Things scale, there is no where to go but up.

And a Happy Thing for today: “I think the sun will rise!”

Happy Solstice.

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The photograph is Emerald, one of the Anna’s Hummingbirds, all fluffed up in the cold and guarding her feeder. There is a bird photobombing the background. I think it is a song sparrow but it was very early and the light is not great.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rise.

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Small wounds

Small wounds over and over.

“The band is invited to Arizona. We’ll be on the radio. And I am trying to set up a recording.”

She keeps her eyes down. Tries not to hope. She has time, she could take time off. She has saved so much vacation, hoping. They would have to have someone stay with the kids.

“It’s going to be a great trip. I haven’t spent anything from the last big sale yet, been saving it for something like this. I was hoping we could record.”

She is wiping the counter slowly, over and over.

“That sale was amazing, just when I needed it. Debts paid and caught up.”

She works in the local government. Steady. It gives them health insurance. Secure retirement. Nothing spectacular. She turns to the sink, to rinse the cloth. The counter is clean enough. She isn’t going to think about it any more.

“That is great.” She tries not to hate the band. “At work–“

He is behind her and hugs her. “You are so great, here for me. We are going in three weeks. February. Perfect time for Arizona, I can’t wait for some sun.”

She tries to feel comforted by his hug and yields to it, as always. She is silent.

“Now make sure you don’t let the kids talk you into giving them too many things while we’re gone.”

She nods.

He kisses her head. He lets go and gets his guitar and coat. “Have a good weekend. I have to practice.” He is headed for the trailer, in the next county, alone for the weekend, to immerse in music.

She turns and watches as he leaves.

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path

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is morass, which I had to look up to be precise about the meaning. Sometimes I think I know how to use a word, but there are meanings that surprise me. An area that doesn’t drain. Here are photographs of Poulsbo’s Fish Park, from February 2022. There is a lovely boardwalk through parts that are not consistently dry and could be a morass. There is a stream too.

https://www.visitpoulsbo.com/business/poulsbos-fish-park/

Awfully pretty for a morass, isn’t it?

It isn’t spring yet, but it will be soon!

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Covid for Christmas

Muscles aching all month then are worse
two more days I ignore the pain
one night I get chills and want to curse
morning testing confirms fears from my brain
sniffles and headache, muscles ache more
text the clinic and call when they’re open
plans upset, friends go to the store
daughter diverted, not what I was hoping
the days count down, I have enough time
glad to get notice before she came here
might as well try to tell it in rhyme
isolate my estate appetite queer
it’s covid for Christmas, not what I’d planned
but women can flex and can’t be unmanned

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Reconcile

I have been thinking about family a lot this week. My mother’s family has been gossiping about me now for a decade and not one of them has ever talked to me directly about my father’s will. They have a story. They never checked it. It stars me as a villain. They seem to think I controlled attorneys, which is laughable.

I forgive them.

However, I think a decade is enough. I forgive them but I no longer want to reconcile. For ten years I hoped that they would talk to me. I have asked them to, more than one person, more than once. They say that they want to believe what they want to believe. I offered to send copies of bank statements to back up what I said. No. And a cousin silenced me by saying, “Don’t make me hate my sister.” The message is that I can be part of the family for some of them, as long as I remain silent as a tomb on this topic.

No. I won’t. And it’s just like all the silencing that goes on over the world. People say they would not stand by while someone is hurt, but my family sure seems to enjoy having me be the silenced gossiped about villain. I am sick of it. They can go to where ever it is that karma will take them: gossip, after all, is a sin.

And so I am reconciled. I am reconciled after a decade to adding these people to my list of dead. Our friendship is dead, my family feeling towards them is dead, I am not asking or waiting or hoping any more.

Forgiveness is a solo job. We forgive others.

Forgiveness is NOT reconciliation. You should not take an abuser back. You should not let someone treat you badly and refuse to listen to you and refuse to apologize. I know one person whose apologies run something like “I am sorry that you took offense to what I said/did.” Um. That is not an apology. That is putting it on me, it’s my fault for taking offense. The person has no intention of changing and does not actually care how I feel. I am not okay with that. The person is forgiven but there has not been a reconciliation.

With my maternal family, I am letting it go. I would like there to be more peace in the world but as long as people cling to having villains, to believing gossip, to perpetuating gossip and hatred and meanness, I do not think we will have peace in the world.

But in letting this go, I have peace in my heart.

Peace you and please peace me.

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Paths

I am reinventing myself now. After my fourth pneumonia, oxygen continuously for a year and now my fifth pulmonologist since 2012. He did not have much to offer. An inhaler but “We can’t be sure that it will keep you from getting pneumonia.”

Well. So with ME-CFS, myalgic encephalopathy chronic fatigue syndrome, now what?

I am at a fork in the path. At least three forks.

  1. Try to do a micropractice, working with Long Covid people. Who either wear masks or I do not see them. I would have to convince the hospital district that it needs me.
  2. Write. I am doing that, but really focus on it and work on publishing. I have so much art from my mother. She did not really enjoy selling it though she loved having shows and would dress up.
  3. I could focus on publicizing and selling my mother’s art.
  4. There is a trunk from my grandfather. I could focus on that. He states that he wants it published. Grandfather, you were a piece of work.
  5. I could just lie around and travel and play with the cats and make music.
  6. Focus on music. I have written a number of songs. Apparently being hypoxic makes me write songs. I think they are peculiar and wonderful too. Flute, voice, guitar, piano, bass. Hmmmm.
  7. Something else. Who knows what will appear? I am doing art too, the two large sculptural pieces in my yard. A fellow doctor scolded me about one. It’s the one with a logging chain and an oxygen tank, attached to a tree. The title is “Tethered”. Now, why would a local doctor object to that? I have some small pieces too that involve found objects and especially feathers and small stemmed glassware.

Many forks! Now I just need more spoons of energy!

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: reinvent.

The photograph was taken in September 2021. Where is the path? I got to hear Jonathan Doyle last night, with George Radabaugh on piano. FABULOUS!