A New Home for My Books - 7/31/08

I recently got rid of a lot of extraneous furniture that was clogging my space and stifling my energy.  Two of those pieces of furniture were my bookcases.  I packed the books up in plastic bins and plastic shopping bags and had them stashed in several rooms.  On Sunday I went shopping for new bookcases (I had two, but really needed 3) and I happened upon a sale.  Since I purchased one of the floor models, I got 25% off.  My new bookcases are solid oak, have closed cabinet doors on the bottoms of each unit and the whole system measures 96” wide by 84” high.  I should have plenty of space for all of my books now.  I should even have room to grow; and God knows I’m not about to stop buying books!  I’m looking forward to having the books all in one place instead of stashed all over the house.

I will really attempt to keep my collection down to what can fit in the new book home and regularly donate books.  I think it was in the early summer of 2007 that I donated a ton of books to the patient library at NIH.  That felt really good to know that they might bring pleasure to someone undergoing chemo or some other serious medical interventions.  It also serves the family of the patients.  Anyone who has spent time in hospitals with family knows how long the days can be waiting for surgery to be over, or the chemo, or the MRI or PET scans, or just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I Wish I'd Written This - 7/22/08

The Layers

by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

"The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz from The Collected Poems. © W.W. Norton, 2000 from The Writer's Almanac

At Two Months - 7/21/08

I couldn't sleep last night, something kept waking me up.  I can't blame cats this time as they've all gone back home.  I only got the barest glimpse of a presence one time so I'm not sure what it was that kept waking me.  At 3:00 I gave up and got up for awhile.  I realized that it was about this time of night 2 months ago that Warren was making his transition so I said a prayer for his soul to be at peace (and I know that it is) and also for my soul to be at peace with this new life.  I sat up until about 4:10 and then when back to bed.  I was able to sleep then and didn't crawl out of bed this morning until almost noon.

Life is moving on I suppose.  Yesterday Hospice had a memorial service for the patients in their care who died during April and May.  I had said I would go, but I felt so much resistance to it yesterday morning I decided not to.   The kids came over around 4:00 and we took Megan out for a belated birthday dinner and then came back here for ice cream cake.  Then we watched the movie "Independence Day" after Dave got my VCR straightened out.  It was making funny noises after the TV repair guys brought the TV back last week.  I've started watching movies again as they are a great distraction and usually much better fare than the broadcast networks are providing at the moment.  I've thought about joining Netflix but haven't done anything about that yet.  So this is a time when I get to decide what I want to do, and when I want to do it. I get this catalog in the mail sometimes called "Soft Surroundings" and on every other page they've got the words "My Time, My Place, My Self".  I think that will be my new mantra for awhile.  My whole life has been about taking care of other people; now I have to learn to take care of myself, learn how to be just myself and not Cheryl wife of, or mother of, or daughter of.  Is this a developmental stage that most women go through given the time and circumstance?  I suspect this is so.

Tomorrow the Salvation Army is coming to take away a lot of big furniture that I wanted to be gone.  Right now most of it is in the middle of the living room ready to go.  Furniture and its placement was always a bone of contention between Warren and myself.  He was all about how something functioned and I (according to him anyway LOL) was all about how it looked.  I could never quite convince him that you could have it both ways.  So the pieces that are going are arguments that I lost over the years.  Most of it should never have moved here when we sold our house.  Its interesting now that I don't have to compromise, I find myself being more thoughtful about the changes I want to make.  So I'm letting go of things and then I'll see if there is another furniture purge required.   I think what needs to happen after this furniture is gone, is that the main rooms that are all open to each other, the living room, sun room and dining room need to be painted.  Then I need to order my new bookcases and they'll go in the sun room where the sofa is at the moment. 

When we were coming in last night from dinner a neighbor man stopped me just as we were getting on the elevator.  I told the kids to go on up and I stayed to talk to him.  He just wanted to let me know he'd heard about Warren and wanted to see how I was doing.  He is a nurse and does work for hospice as well.  Anyway when I got back upstairs, my son says "So when is your date?"  I had to laugh.  No date people, that particular gentleman is of a different persuasion.

Cat, Cat, Cats - 7/17/08

I've been baby sitting my Grandcats this week; my daughter's 3.  Yes 3!  Jane is 18 and deaf and has lost her ability to effectively manage her own fur coat or to cover up her business in the litter box (Ewww).  She looks like a dirty dust mop and I must say that waking up to the smell of cat business in the middle of the night isn't my favorite thing in the world.  The other two are about a year old and are litter mates but are as different as night and day.  Harley is large and is a calico and Dinah is petite and dark furred.  They're all a little skittish and are taking a long time to warm up to Grandma.

Yesterday my daughter called and left a phone message while I was out.  She was calling the cats on the message.  When I played it back the two young ones went nuts looking for her.  I played it back 3 times for them because it was just so funny to watch.

I had heard rumors that the old cat liked to meow at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, but last night was the first time I got to experience that particular thrill.  It not only woke me up, but it freaked out the other two cats as well and propelled them up onto the bed with me which they hadn't done so far.

At 7:30 this morning Dinah was playing with my feet so I figured sleep was over and got up.  I had the alarm set for 8:00 anyway.

I've been toying with the idea of getting a cat but I'm not sure I want to take on the care and feeding of any additional mammals at this time. 

Oh, and yeah, Cosmo the Beta is here too.

Today is my Granddaughter's 16th Birthday.  Happy Birthday Megan!!!!!!

Just So You Know - 7/10/08

Just so you know, I am not crying all day everyday.  Some days I'm quite content.  Some days I'm moving furniture around until I have to take tylenol and put my feet up.  Yesterday I finished shredding the last of the extraneous paper that my husband had saved for his whole life.  It was like an archaeological dig going back through the layers of his and my life together and then back to even earlier times, which we used to call BC (before Cheryl).  I'm just praying to God that he doesn't have more stashes of things that need to be shredded packed away in his garage.  That chore will have to wait until the Granddaughter goes back to school.  Right now I'm focussed on making the house fit my needs since I no longer have to compromise; I've decided to make this place my sanctuary.

Everything Has a Story - 7/9/08

Going through someone else’s accumulation of a lifetime is a chore.  The more you were connected to the person the harder it becomes because the things are filled with sentimental value as well as whatever intrinsic value they might also hold.  What I’ve discovered in going through Warren’s things is that everything has a story attached to it.  Some of the stories I know and they make me smile, but other stories I won’t ever know now and that feels sad to me.

I found some pictures of him yesterday that look as if they were done for a passport or a badge.  They were taken in his early 40’s before he and I got together.  He looked unhappy to me and unloved.  I thought I don’t know the man in that picture.

 He was 48 when we married and I was 35 so he had an entire lifetime that did not include me.  He’d traveled the whole world many times over in his work with NASA, helping to establish the ground satellite tracking stations long before the era of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) made them obsolete.  I am jealous of that time and wish it had been mine as well.

Today I came across a lock of his baby hair his Mother cut when he was a year old.  Touching that red gold softness I am undone.