Mourning.

I would hardly be the first, and it's hardly the first time I've thought this myself - but the loss, through the 20th century, of traditional mourning practices in the United States is also a loss of an important signal between us as humans. It's been tempting, since my stepfather's death, to find some way to communicate, without having to have awkward conversations with strangers or acquaintances, that I have just endured a loss. With even the black armband all but vanished, mourning itself is an awkward proposition anymore.

There has been an increasing sense, for me, that it's time to move on. Nobody has pressed this upon me, but with weeks passing at a clip (I almost cannot believe it's been nearly three now), there is an inescapable feeling that continuing to Have The Feels about my stepfather's death is already drama-queening. That, to be frank, there is only the briefest of periods we can get away with not being okay and getting on with the day-to-day.

It would be ... if not nice, then certainly convenient, to have an unspoken signal of mourning. If one is to get on with the day-to-day, not having to *speak* about the loss of a loved one would certainly facilitate that. But the human heart is what it is, and it still hurts when people you're not sure even "know about it" register no sympathy. There is confusion - do I tell this person I see every day? Why should I have to do that? It feels like dramatics to lay that on people - particularly when you're not sure whether they know already. Some people won't speak because it's been more than a few days, and the news-cycle of life has sailed. Some people won't speak because they are sensitive to the pain of loss. Some people won't speak because they are awkward with the subject. Some people won't speak because they do not know. As the bereaved, it would be easier to know - is this person in ignorance, or are they being kind? It HELPS to understand.

So much of communication is nonverbal.

And so, if I had a signal, I could at least understand the words that do come toward me. And I could also communicate this important thing about myself, without having to stop time in the workroom to say, "Yeah, my stepfather just died." And leave someone feeling VERY awkward.

My guess is, this is one more gift Americans have accidentally or heedlessly imposed upon the world. In the rush to imprint our informality, nonconformity, and expectations upon human interaction, we have obliterated some forms of signal someone figured wasn't necessary, and over time the social enforcement that is conformity (har) ended up killing off this branch of etiquette. Uncomfortable, restrictive, depressing, perhaps even importunate upon the carefree (har) lives of other individuals.

Goodbye, mourning. Seriously, has anyone seen real mourning since Jackie Kennedy? I can't so much as remember consistently black garb at funerals; my mom, as it happens, wore poppy-red over a red and black dress, to the funeral inspiring me to discuss this whole thing. She is a great believer in the reaffirmation of life in vivid (the word means lively, after all) color.

I wore black. He was a bit more traditional. And he deserves to be mourned.

Indeed, since he died, I have kept my wardrobe more on the sober side ever since. If I can't go around in mourning jewelry (that people will understand as such, as opposed to thinking I just picked coz I'm goth-ly tinged), at least I can calibrate my mien to less flamboyance. And wear *less* jewelry. I actually applied a shot of brown hairspray to cover the blue hair, in fact, before the funeral; and at least once or twice since. I'm not even wearing highlighting cosmetics these days; bright eyes just seem inappropriate. (And the simpler the eye makeup, the less smear when I slip and find myself crying. In the middle of a meeting. Because: dork. In mourning.)

Three weeks. And already, I find myself embarrassed to even SAY "I am in mourning" (except to that one actual human telemarketer who called, and I could not take it). In the culture I've grown up in, mourning itself is unseemly, because it imposes upon those around us the distasteful necessity of sensitivity, or just the reminder of mortality. Mourning for three WEEKS, well. That is just melodramatic.



And yet, I am impelled to say - at least here - he deserves more than weeks. And what he has taught me, perhaps especially in his own final week, which was horrific ... will stay with me for the rest of my life. I still don't understand everything I saw and experienced, and it's both something to process and also to extrapolate from: for all I went through the eternity and power and heartbreak of his deathbed, my mom has been enduring as a caregiver for years now. His decline, in fact, goes back eight years - I still remember the Mother's Day lunch we shared, when we had to hold his arm back out to the parking lot.

Mom is still learning, too. Just how long this road has been. How, bit by bit, her own liberty to move in the world was curtailed - sometimes by my stepfather's will (he developed terrified and aching separation anxiety), and always by his frailty. How she did it all herself, and kept him home.

Six months ago, I was firmly of the belief that I would NEVER die in a hospital. My own dad's death left me sure it was barbaric and awful. My own dad's death came fast, though.

Now, I am not so sure. Being home might be nice, if I could be assured of sudden death (and that The Poobahs would not starve). It has an allure - who would wish to be in a hospital at the end?

But a slow death at home ... knowing that I could be alone, is that something to sign up for in all eagerness? Not that I'm interested in artificial prolongation, but the variables in horror - if I were alone, and broke a hip (my stepfather's final crisis was a break, and this is often a precipitating factor for those already in decline), what would I endure, ensconsed at home yes, but immobilized, in pain ... ?

Even with caregivers, death at home isn't some peaceful slipping away in one's own bed. Indeed, a standard bed is a horrible, dangerous place. Only after a hospital bed was delivered did my stepfather subside from cruel restlessness and the torture of his broken bones. And by "subside" I do not mean he found comfort. Only some respite, and that incomplete itself.

I learned from him; and sat with him, and tried to give him silence. Sound made him uncomfortable, so I stopped even indulging myself telling him how much I loved him. Or that he could go on. We told him that a lot. He didn't need to hear it, he wasn't holding out for permission to die.


And this too, I learned from him ... death doesn't always answer to the pretty stories we apply to it. It's not always a saga of fulfillment, someone waiting until an important figure comes to their side and releases them. It's not even always a question of release. The man my stepfather was? He had life left, and he was going to use it all up. All of it. Where for six years, he literally begged for death, once it announced it was come, he wrung out of his body the last *iota* of life left to him. Death wasn't impatient for him; those of us around him were.

It is a harrowing thing, a week long deathbed. Human chatter becomes intolerable, and I understand his responses when it was pushed on him, or shot over him as if he were barely there. He was there.

Even outside the room where he lay, the prognostications of "when" ... the stories about crows haunting us, or passed family members coming to take him away ... were not merely exhausting, they became irrelevant quickly as he kept on living on ... and we undoubtedly crossed into distasteful territory, more than once. People coming and going, speaking loudly of meals once shared, or playing music he would have hated ... crossing with those who came to sing, to pray, to just be beside him.

I think (and this may just be a story I tell myself) I became more silent as the days passed, simply because that was the only gift I had left to give to him. I stopped typing one day, because I felt the sound of my keystrokes, even, were too much to bear. I didn't hold his hand constantly, I stopped telling him he was the best stepfather ever, or that I loved him, or how much he amazed me.

I just never stopped kissing his head. Breathing the smells of him - not all of them beautiful. And yet, I both miss the scent of him and find myself having a sort of PTSD series of flashbacks to the smell that seemed most emblematic of him in his last year or so. The smell of his death began long before he ever broke a bone.



I miss him, and I love him, and I mourn him, and just thinking it makes me weep silently.

One of the funniest people I ever knew.

Someone who, never having been a father before, took on our whole family when he was not a strapping youth, and who found ways to laugh alongside us. Great G-d, it was not always easy - for him, or for us. The first years were difficult.

But the past eight? The past six? The years since my brother's family moved, and it's been me, mom, and him? The time it took for me to go from reluctance, to content, to tenderness?

I am blessed to have had these years.

Their passing deserves observation.

My stepfather deserves mourning.

Happy Enough Old Year

The evening is underway, as are feline and canine post-supper naptimes. Goss has his front half upended inside the warm curve of his back half, curled in the new chair, and Pen is flaked out on her flank in the floor. I chose "Arrival" tonight; slow-moving and blessedly low on explosions, at least halfway along it is - it's gloomy and murky but not too thinky so far. Seems to be just the ticket for me.

The year has been dwindling down with oddness and pains in my head, a great deal of work around the house, but mostly quiet. It is one of my pensive years, to be rung out alone and contemplating.

Last year was a jangle. Good times with friends, but the car got towed, there was loud music and cigarette smoke. This year, just this; staying in, staying warm. Remembering, and looking forward as as I do: seldom and poorly. The memories are ones which once were so painful, but now only make me who I am. And I am content with that, mostly. Always some work to do.

Life is like homeownership; if you don't have something you think you need to work on, the place'll go to pot.

In two weeks from now, many long months of meeting planning, and two trips to attend them, will be over. I realized this a couple of days ago, to my own surprise. Most of 2017 has been occupied with these events; and now I will be able to just do my day-to-day job. It'll be strange for a little while.

I am as content as the fur-bearing critters, this hour. Never satisfied. But content.



CONTENT NEW YEAR TO YOU, and to yours.

*Raises a glass, be it whatever you happen to like* Cheers!

Squees and Thanks

Thanksgiving didn't turn out as planned, but oh I do love the quiet holidays that are just me, mom, and my stepfather. He has been ailing for seven years now, but the point has come where doctors are starting to recommend stopping recurring procedures, and the slowdown he is in now feels somewhat different from previous periods when he has felt low. So, though I'd invited them to my house, at about 1:30 on Thanksgiving day, when I was pulling the turkey breast out to tent it for its final phase, grabbed the broccoli and sweet potato dishes, and went to their house.

When your mom is in tears, the dishes you've twice-washed and spot-inspected lose all significance.

But our day, which is possibly the last quiet-holiday time the three of us will share, was lovely. He was up most of the time I was there, and dressed even. We had a few little laughs; his grace is at times the greatest blessing for others, in the face of his pain. I deeply love my stepfather. Another blessing, and one I did not see coming eleven or twelve years ago.

As much as those I love must endure, my own life is richly blessed and comfortable right now. I still miss Mr. X. But there is someone that remarkable in this world, for me to miss. That is inestimable.

At four years in, my "new" job is now entirely mine. I love the work I do, and I like and respect the people I get to work with. It was scary to leave public service, but I have learned that a form of service that is much more direct has great rewards, and what we do is honorable, sometimes fun, and gives to our community in ways that are new to me and mean so much. All this, and at four years there's a bump in vacation accrual, so woo!

Gossamer and Penelope are still the finest little monsters anyone could ask to live with. Goss is soft and gentle - and preternaturally forgiving of his great lummox of a human. Pum is soulful and warm, both magnificent and insouciant. They make me laugh every day, and then they warm my heart.

Writing ... I'm doing that. Not enough - but is it ever enough, in any writer's mind? What is happening with it is good. That counts.

Christmas: we are looking forward to my brother and BOTH nieces coming for a visit.

And homeownership ... ahhh, homeownership! Here may be the most immediate squee for today. In three days from now, I will have a new run of five kitchen cabinets. One wall has always been the home of every bit of storage in this 67-year-old house - and it's not too bad, actually; lowers, as well as uppers all the way to the ceiling, and I have eleven-foot ceilings, so storage is significant.

So 'long about my birthday (suffice it to say, this was over half a year ago), I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore a couple or three times, and found a pair of midcentury cabinets which will coordinate nicely with the originals. Since, then, I have poked now and then at all of them - removing the old black hammered hinges from mine, spackling and repainting the uppers (white), throwing around a bad paint job (black) on the lowers, re-hinging all of the uppers including the "new" ones.

Today is the day to remove the lower doors and old hardware, give them a spackle and sanding, and tomorrow paint 'em black.

MONDAY ... comes the handyman. He will cut the crown molding and patch the circa-1950 hole in the wall that was all we had in the kitchen for a vent back then. Install the cabinets, AND the ventless range hood. And all the drawer and cabinet handles. He's even going to tidy up a spot of water damage (long since resolved) that predates my 16 year ownership. The tile I ordered isn't here yet, but we'll call this guy back. Or cross fingers it'll arrive today! :)

Oh my gosh. In three days, I will have new kitchen cabinets. I'll be able to put away my crock pot, cookie jar, lots of things. So exciting!

And on the first day of The Big Holiday Family Visit, I also will have a brand new chair. Mom and I recently went chair (s)hopping at a couple of stores, and on my own time I tried at least one more place, on a quest to find The Chair. The chair you come home to, that will welcome you and take care of you all evening after work. The chair that is kind of foxy, but also comfortable. And one we saw on the day she and I sallied forth was all that, but also had remarkably good BACK SUPPORT. It was the chair that stuck in my head through a few more chairs and another shopping trip. And it will be mine.

This is the kind of chair that makes a big difference in a home. It's the kind of chair that makes a big difference in most days, too. So, with this, and the major changes in the kitchen, some really big improvements for the holidays. After The Great Bookcase Project of the summer of 2017 (three. seven-foot. bookcases, y'all. Don't even tell me you're not jealous), and the final completion of the it-seemed-neverending basement job, this is going to make for one HECK of an organized domicile. And just in time to clutter it all up with Christmas decorations!

Still life with much clutter

Hoping everyone had a splendid, blessed, and joyous Thanksgiving, and that the best is yet to come.

Are you ready ... ???

All the Books

All the books I've bought lately have had their own distinctive, incredibly satisfying feeling in my hands. Of one book, I bought four copies. Its pages enchanted me. The resonance, when you tap the stack of them, that echo inside the minuscule spaces between them, the space inside the books, their universe.

Image: Wikipedia

Of another, I bought two. These are older books, hardcover, each of them with the mylar slipcover. One is a first edition, a gift. The other is for me. The instant I opened it, and my hand touched its cover, and I felt that soft vibration, heard the sound of its thump - that soft thump when you pat a book, that satisfying thump as warm as the thump I give Penelope on her furry, deep chest ...

That book had the best thump I have felt in a long time.

Penelope has good thump.

I knew I had to buy another copy of this book for someone I love. And that one, when I found it - that soft, quiet, warm sound. Of a book.

That glorious sound - when you *have* opened a book, when you've been using it as G-d intended, filling yourself with it - and you have to close it again. That sound, of closing a book. Closing a hardcover. That soft, soft, but definitive closing, the almost invisible sound of the mylar, the indescribable movement of paper against itself, and the covers coming together, protecting it, saving the rest of the pages for you, saving them all for you.

What is the best-feeling book you have held lately?

THAT House on the Block

The yard is badly in need of mowing right now - not only has spring finally arrived, but we've had a great deal of rain, so (where Penelope hasn't worn it out running along the fence - which will save me some weed-eating!) it's a bit thick.  I won't say "lush", because what's really thick right now is the early-spring growth of rubbery purple weed flowers, which tend to be clumpy and fail to live up to the suburban ideal of pure green grass.  My neighbors' homes have a lovely growth of Easter grass right now, but my place is not the beauty of the block.

It wouldn't take much work, nor much time - but since Wednesday I've had a fairly severe case of instant allergies, and mowing the grass, no matter how community-minded it may be, just is not on my list, even though in actuality I'd kind of like the time outside in a wonderful breeze, and the exercise.  Note to intrepid suburban kids anywhere:  if you showed up at my door right now, I'd gladly pay you to take care of this for me, providing gas and mower personally.  Just sayin' - if you want a buck, the scruffy house on the block might be for you.

Today is the first day I've had open windows, and I did start the meds on Wednesday night.  I think it's helped, at least as far as beginning to fight the overarching symptoms of seasonal allergies - itchy eyes, SNEEZING - but the more immediate symptoms - sore throat, congestion, laryngitis - are tenacious.  They spawn further symptoms of their own - mouth-breathing, for instance, which then leads to chapped lips and feeling dehydrated, which leads to constant water-drinking, which leads to feeling bloated.  I'm almost fascinated at the daisy-chain of cause, effect, and annoyance - but, honestly, I don't actually feel as rotten as, for instance, I sounded this morning at nearly ELEVEN a.m. when my mom called and I was still half-zonked on nighttime cold/allergy pills.  Oops.

A bit of high-cacao chocolate being my preferred caffeine delivery method, I induced Godiva therapy after talking with her, and have done a lot at least upstairs.  On the main floor, I need to shove enough furniture out of the way to remove The Winter Rug - yes, it's a stupid idea; dusty and heavy-breathing-inducing (and if I can't mow the grass, how can I move a 200-pound rug?), but it's my idea and I'm all into it.

And here we have the point of this post.  I've written here many times about what it's like living alone, but the underlying issue is almost cultural.  The nuclear family ideal, and its analogue, Living Independently, make "going out on your own" sound like the way we're all supposed to structure our lives.  Living Independently, of course - that thing where we're expected to leave the nest at eighteen and live on our own until we create our own nuclear family with McMansion, starter-spouse, 2.38 children, and 2.38 cars - is the shaming device we use against such adults as have to go home to mom and dad for one reason or another.  I internalized Living Independently really early, and am not ready to give it up (the idea of living with my mom if, G-d forbid, she were ever widowed again, for instance, is beyond my ability to tolerate).  But it comes with its price.  And its fears.

It's not just the daily inconveniences, when I have to do EVERY last thing in the world that needs to be done, and perpetually fall short, by the estimation of an awful lot of people who see fit to have ideas about what needs to be done in my house, personal life, etc.  My finances, far from being my own as an Independent Woman, are the subject of MANY people's speculation and advice - and not just people I consider to be close family or friends.  "You should buy a such-and-such car" is the easy expectation of people I hardly know with whom I casually mention I have been looking.  Of course, mentioning such a thing is guaranteed to bring that on, but I don't even have a wife I can hide behind to demur on the more insistent suggestions of people who apparently know my needs better than I do ...

So it's an odd thing.  The more independent we are in the society I happen to have grown up in, the LESS autonomy people ascribe to my way of living.  People give advice to any and all, of course, but it *feels* like the advice to a single woman has a special insistence.

We've created a world in which "failing" to live independently is shamed and unnatural (natural as multi-generational living was for thousands of years before the 20th century), but doing so carries not only its own judgments, but also the fears and perils that go with ageing with no partner, no family, nobody in the home.  It's not a minor price to pay for the pride and accomplishment of living on our own terms, and it's something I wrestle with all the time.  The responsibility is both a matter of pride and chagrin - and, while I think I may be unable ever to be the person who'd blend again with my mom, or a geriatric roommate situation a'la The Golden Girls, I'm hardly gratified by the prospect of the next twenty or forty years of what it *really* means to be on my own.

Pride wins, with me (... apparently ...), but it's not because I never think about whether I could be wrong.  I've fulfilled some of the expectations of my upbringing, and it's beyond me to honestly imagine anything I'd change.  But that doesn't mean I think I've done everything just right.  Life *shouldn't* feel like it's gone exactly right, I think in a way.  If we felt completely righteous and satisfied - what would there be to work on in ourselves, or for others?

And who's going to do the dusting, with me here blogging?  A good question.  And I'm off ...

Literalism versus Favoritism

Growing up in my family, it didn't do to be reductive.  Superlatives and absolutes tended to be greeted with deconstructive comments (not un-constructive, but rather debunkingly analytical), and so I learned early to avoid stating many extremes.

Well, I didn't learn not to state them.  But I did learn that if I took anything to a descriptive limit, there would always be someone standing by that boundary to prove it was far more distant than anything I could quantify, or that the very boundary itself was imaginary.

So I began at a young age to take the concept of "favorite", for instance, to its illogical conclusion, and to avoid the idea assiduously.  I can actually recall taking my idea, that green was my favorite color, and lying in the backseat of my parents' very green indeed Plymouth Fury station wagon, peering at the physical greenness of my surroundings, and imagining green as the ONLY color I could ever have, and being disappointed.

It's one of the million ways we affect one another as humans, this sort of tiny influencing commentary of a family, which becomes a very silly part of someone's being, far far beyond any real intention or even expectation.  My parents and brother might have wanted me to become a critical thinker, but to provide me a mild neurosis about favorite things could hardly have been their point.  It means (per my blog's very headline) that I contain multitudes, but it also means I make a rotten interview, because I snark on about how reductive questions are instead of answering them.

And so I am aware that people are capable of feeling that one color is best, or one food is peerless, but the idea of choosing gives me the distantest echo of Sophie's dilemma, in that I despise to pick one superlative because everything apart from "the best" still creates the richness and variety and context that makes anything truly shine.  Intellectually, I can know that loving one thing most doesn't doom all else to destruction - and yet, the only context in this world in which I can honestly say I have a favorite is in Mr. X, who is my most favorite person in the world with whom I don't share DNA.  I peek around from time to time, just to be sure, but at almost eleven years knowing him, it seems reasonable to state he really did ruin me for all the other boys.

It can be bewildering, though, to run across other people's favorite things, because there can be hard lines in this world it's trickier to negotiate if you don't draw your own.  Other people can put you on a path or hem you in with their ability to hold absolutes - in religion and politics, of course, this can get dangerous.  And, at times, it can be more comfortable to be persuasable ("where do you want to eat?"), but of course there are those who see a certain type of flexibility as waffling.

I have my convictions, but I keep them pretty close and refuse to hand them out to anyone I am not pretty intimate with.  Most of my own hard lines took me decades to draw - and, as I have grown older, I have discarded some of those things I thought were non-negotiable when I was a younger person.  Few of my deepest ... expectations (beliefs can be a different thing) ... have ever actually changed - and yet, I have seen my methods of managing their presence adapt in amazing ways over my lifetime.

This calendar year has seen some of the profoundest philosophical changes in me - without compromise, and yet without radical outward alterations.  It is at the deepest level I've let go of certain boundaries, and in the quietest solitude of my soul I have found liberty it astonishes me to have given myself and my heart.

Relinquishing certain expectations has only solidified the power of what drives and matters to me most.  Letting go of certain ideas of practical living, of faith, and even love, has only deepened these things by providing clarity.  There is great peace in the understanding this can give, and such emotional power, and all over again I find myself grateful with the blessings that seem to provide themselves to me, all undeserving.  Paths are easier to follow, fears are fewer.

I don't know a lot of people who can claim the assurance I feel, simply by letting go of certain ideas about conviction, by questioning those things which are supposed to be "given" for us as human beings.


Question something you hate, or love, or fear.  Really let yourself be wrong ... or, more terrifyingly, right.  There's almost no liberty like it.  Almost no power at all.  It is joyous.

Work

The days continue to be pretty challenging, but today seems to have been a turning point, or at least one among many which was less painfully out of my control.  For a couple of months, things have been at a level of busy the word only glancingly begins to evoke.  For the past two and a half weeks. the volume's been turned up to eleven - ten and a half hour days, keeping my online status at "busy" constantly, battling a dizzying array of priorities, feeling good just to manage adequacy.

I kicked today's BUTT, though.  Today I scratched off some other people's priorities, as well as a *nicely* significant whack of MY urgent to-do's.  Review of points of contact - done.  Security review - done.  Transactions reconciled - done.  You wanted a meeting?  Done, my friends.  Initial forays into The Next Big Things coming down the pike - done.  Final confirmations for the imminent monster of a big thing already breathing down my neck?  So done, done, done, done, done, done, and done - and updates send to everybody too.  And, to top those things, a nice little "done" checklist for the top boss.  I even dang near managed to take on a print shop job - had it licked by the time ... one of my partners in crime said she was taking it off of my plate.  I almost felt "darn" about losing the thing, having nailed it upon some trial and error.

One of the best things about today was not only getting out on time (no lunch, but no late hour either), but also getting to reach out to a number of my favorite, and most reliable partners.  One of the best, who is coordinating a massive video conference event.  Two of the nicest to work with, for those Next Big Things, through the rest of 2013.  And another arm out, reaching for guidance on how to manage something I've been asking to take on for some months now.  Think we've got the right contact at last, and she even answered my initial entre' before I left the office.

This time next week, I will still be quite exhausted, but it won't be a bad thing.  I'm grateful it's gotten to the turning point now.  And looking forward to the day off I've given myself when the looming thing is finally over.  SHEW.

Work, With Music on the Side

Today started off with "For Those About to Rock" ...


I had that revolting experience today where something went wrong and there was NOTHING for it but to say I'd screwed up.  We all do it, I know that - but since December or so, at work, I've been trying to improve upon a slump in performance that came after the Summer O' Stress, and what's truly awful is that I feel like I *have* made such strides and that I've been doing well - but hell if any error I make isn't going to be the one the boss has to see.  Simultaneously ameliorating the pain and actually making it worse is the fact that my boss's response today was not "you screwed up" but to address me with the concern that there is too much on my plate, or some distraction causing problems in prioritizing.  I basically said, I don't think there's any excuse to lay this on, this was pure screw-up.  Still, it must be said, "it isn't a problem with attitude or aptitude" is one of the best sentences bestowed upon me for a long time.  I only wish it were really true.  (My attitude is dandy; but I really do question my aptitude.)

Most of the errors any of us make in a day come in little things, miscalculations that aren't disastrous - and even this one we got worked through okay.  But it was a hugely visible problem - not just to my bosses, but to our entire management team.  I *LOVE* my team.  They are smart, good people, some of whom I've come to be friends with on the personal level (not a typical mode of operation for me in any job), and they don't stint in professional recognition, support, and gratitude.  I am blessed beyond my own gratitude that I get to have the job I have.  So when I screw up, it feels almost like INgratitude, and it drives me absolutely crazy.

Also frustrating is that I have BEEN able to do this job.  Even before I'd fully learned it, taking it on was never too much.  Once I felt like I'd come into ownership, the pride of my position never suffered because there was so much to do.  So it irks me that stress has made a dink of me.  I've been trying so hard to put stress *behind* me (at least the particular stress that got me distracted several months back), so evidence there's still some out front makes me mad.

My dad would have told me to take the energy of that frustration and direct it.  The little kid living inside my ageing carcass, however, just whines, "I've BEEN doing that!  It isn't WORKING!" and stomps off impolitely, selfishly.

Inevitably, my performance is always selfish.  Most of us are probably like that.  Yeah, the pride of a job well done.  Well, nobody benefits from my pride but me, so - still selfish, really.

At the end of the day, I got less selfish and just nose-to-the-grindstone.  And, by end of the day, I mean that at the moment I might take off if I had everything done, the phone rang - and it was my boss.  Who had travel tomorrow, taking him into the path of the storm bearing down on such a huge swath of the continent.  Time to look into that.

And time for everyone else to do the same.

The chain of on-hold-ness became pretty hilarious during the course of the hour it took to shift his connection out of the nasty zone (though his ultimate destination may not even escape the issues!).  United had our travel rep on hold, he had me on hold, I was on another line with my boss, who had me on hold trying to call his own colleague ... Or something of that telephonically preposterous nature.  No wonder it took us an hour - and never mind the thousands of other travelers also staring down the barrel of flight cancellations.

My own soundtrack to this - "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince.  If I wrote that in a story, it'd be too on the nose to ever work.

To be truthful - during that hour of fiasco-ery, I stressed pretty seriously.  But, for whatever reason, this afternoon I did remember my dear dog and my kitten, remembered how fortunate I am in my job and my team, remembered those I love (and those I'll never even know) who would be blessed to complain of something at work - if only they had jobs - and was able to relax.

And the drive home was relatively un-crowded and un-stressful.  I put in "The Gathering" on random, and first got the song *I* think of as being deeply tied to me and Mr. X ("Third Chance") and then got the one he first proffered to me as being like us ("Nighttime Birds").  I turned off the stereo after those, and just drove.  I didn't get home until nearly 7:30, but it is quiet here, warm - and life is so sweet.  Kit is on the coffee table, and Penelope beneath it.  A gleaming green pair of widely dilated eyes is glancing my way, as white velvet sneaker-paws play in a stack of papers I have brought out to force myself to deal with some personal filing.  And "Big Bang Theory" was on tonight.

It's after nine, but I get to sleep in a comfortable bed, even if I am the only human soul in this house.  At least I know whom I love; that is blessing and content - even if not the fullness of satisfaction.

Rain

The day started off cool and heavy with rain, and by the time I got to work it had begun.  A good, proper rainy day - and we had thunder and deluge off and on too.  By one o'clock, there was a bit of sunshine, and when I left the office at four to go exchange the rental car (and ended up being able to pick up my own **), it was plenty overcast, but not actively raining.

Tonight, though, it is a thick sky.  All the way down to the ground.

It's hot out, for one.  Probably sixty-five at least.  And the rain, so copious has nowhere left to go.  The ground is saturated; a pudding, a morass.  It can't take in any more.  And so the air is left to hold the bag - and it is misty, heavy, almost impossible to see through - almost impossible to walk through.

Breathing it is almost as bad as not breathing.  Suffocating.  It is nasty.

Still, the Lolly needs her walkies - so the air must be braved.  And I need my walkies too, really.  In over a week and a half without enough exercise, the challenges to breathing don't get thinner with poor habits.  I've even put back on three or four pounds, which is frustrating but more a motivator than really dismaying.  Easy enough to rectify.

As to the reason for the decline in exercise, of course my back is finally getting better.  Sadly, still I'm not at my best.  I did notice starting around Sunday evening that the little pains I was noticing were the muscle soreness of new exercise or unaccustomed use - I was feeling, not the pain of my back, but the sore moments of those parts of me which have been compensating for that pain over time.  A good exchange, that.  And encouraging, after cleaning house on Saturday, which wasn't easy (and, since I am a *stupid* and stubborn brat, happened to involve a lot of laundry-lugging).

Less encouraging was my mom's diagnosis with a chronic, incurable disease - and her more immediate, acute issues with a very temporary but still far too impressive illness.  By yesterday, she was sounding subdued, passive, very quiet.  In short, noting like herself.  That was  little sobering, and though she seems to be on the upswing herself from the more immediate illness, the other one is probably going to come into daunting, depressing focus.  It's especially dismaying, because mom has been working so hard for a while now to work out, to lose weight, to eat right.  So to get a bad report makes that seem like wasted effort, and it has been a lot of effort.

Add to this that my stepfather too is not so well these days, and the impotence I feel regarding my loved ones is a bit much.

It's odd, though - this rarefied Leap Day, this heavy weather, this irksome business with my own fallout since the collision - these things with my family, and how hectic work has been - I have been feeling particularly sanguine today.  Not joyous.  But grateful.  Content.  At peace.  Quietude, even if it is not satisfaction, is much to sink into, to enjoy.

So it goes.  And another day almost over ...



**The only problem with picking up my own car was the ding they left on the passenger side - which I was prepared to overlook - and the extreme amount of CREAKING in the read - which I was not.  Even during the couple of days I drove it after the accident, before it could be dropped off, it wasn't sounding like that.  So this is disconcerting.  And disappointing - given that I thought getting to pick it up was finally the end of being stuck in rental cars.  Blah.

We Visited Dad Today.

Mom and I got together to celebrate my first half-day of work today. Went to the antique store and the thrift store. Had lunch at the place I once found myself surprised to run into TEO and her luminescent, amazing family (SUCH good gyros). Went to see dad.

She took me where I had not ventured in many, many years; to the newly redesigned steampunk-style building where he worked for so many years. We visited him, and she obessively read every new stone, marked since she had last been there. In dad's memorial garden, he was one of the first residents. I held my mom and wept before his plaque. My tears fell on her hand, and she wiped them away, half-smiling.

We saw a little lizard, a bronzed creature looking burnished against the memorial stones. She was gorgeous, perfect; asymmetrical - clinging to the wall horizontally, her right legs reaching up, holding on; her left legs close to the body, bracing her hold ...

We sat and looked at all the windows in the chapel. It is such a spare, beautiful chapel; and the light was literally dazzling. Marvelous.

"We didn't know each other at all; but it was so right."

She recited a dirty limerick he had told her. "I don't think I've ever told you that before." Nope. She hadn't.

Even dad's style of dirty humor was kind of literary. G-d love him. There was a man from Boston ...

"We met in August, and by the second and third date we were talking about marriage."

I'd always known this. (Mom had a dragon, after all ...) But today I thought to ask, "What did y'all say? Were you talking *about* marriage - as a concept? - or was it, 'boy I think I kind of dig you' - YOU talking about marrying EACH OTHER ... ?"

"Oh, it was US. It was 'I think we're done', it was 'this is *it*' ..."

Gawd. And I bet it was, too. Dad was IN LOVE with my mother. Slam, total, absolute IN LOVE with her, irrevocable, always, and to the day he died. He found her vivacious, engaging, incredibly beautiful. They were constantly necking when my brother and I were kids. Shoot, it never stopped. He would kiss her all the time. He never stopped; and she never stopped trying to attract him, either. She was dressing up for him literally until the day he died. Which he did, lying in a hospital bed, spooned against her.

He *wanted* her, singularly, uniquely - indelibly. Few people ever enjoy that kind of love from anyone. And dad was utterly open to my mom. They had hard times, they were human. But he never, ever, ever would have let her go.

I think this is why so many people are so judgemental about the man I chose to love. *Le sigh*


My mom and dad met in August. They were married in December.

My mom doesn't wait two years for anyone ... so she didn't wait. And he finished grad school a married man.



We drove his car. We felt the wind.

She's probably going to sell that car. She's been saying so for years ...

We visited dad today.

It was an absolutely beautiful day.

Rainy Tomorrow

Sunday will be a rainy one. Not cold, but a nice, grey soaker, and I am so looking forward to it. The house is clean now, as am I, but with all the shoving, I didn't do laundry. So tomorrow I see one short-ish trip, for lots of produce (no farmer's markets open this early in the spring; but I sure do feel like doing that vegetable stew thing), accompanied by generous amounts of napping and/or dozing, good reading, and clothes cleaning. I might even hem that dress I've been meaning to get to. Doesn't it sound perfectly delicious ... ?

...

One of the things about age is the inevitability of giving things up. What encroaches on us isn't gain. Oh, there are new things, new additions all the time - increases, accelerations ... But most of what we get isn't gain. Only mentally, only emotionally can we control what everywhere else becomes erosion.

"I am made of hope," I have been known to say.

Apparently, over time, one comes to be made of sadder stuff.

I resent this loss.

And - even so - I content myself with it.



Ah, content. Cold comfort for those of us without satisfaction.