Road Trip in August, Buckle Up!

At 2 am this, I woke up to the sound of moaning, my own, it turns out.  Before I got this gizmo in my back, it wasn't uncommon to wake up moaning, take meds, and go back to bed.  Post-gizmo, it hasn't been happening.

When one has robotic parts, I learned, she should charge up everything before going to bed. 

I tried for two hours to stimulate a conversation between the device, the handset, the communicator, and the recharger--but they refused to talk to each other.  So I returned to my Pre-Gizmo regimen, and finally--after doing the NYT word games, letting Luci out, and ripping up a size 4 skirt from a thrift store for a book cover--I fell asleep.  

Today I called the gizmo company. An hour-long tutorial got me back on track. 

I was feeling so good that I went to the bakery and stopped in at a little shop that sells lampshades made out of marbled paper.  Going back to the car, I stumbled and fell on the uneven pavement.  No harm done, just felt ridiculous down on the sidewalk.

Out came a customer from the bakery and the manager at Cappy's, two kind men who helped me to my car and offered to get me a drink.  

Next stop was Herweck's Art Supplies for handmade paper, so I came home to get my partner--as she's always ready for a field trip.  As I neared my house, I thought someone had parked an orange car in my driveway, but it turned out to be Jan's big thick birds of paradise!

Our adjoining yards  are confections of colors: red bougainvillea, hot pink crepe myrtles, bright orange birds of paradise, yellow Esperanza and lantana, blue plumbago, everything in full bloom and plant- ecstatic after our recent rains! 

Herweck's has a wonderful assortment of handmade papers.  I spent an hour shopping for supplies while Luci soaked up attention and back scratches from clerks and customers. 

The pleasure of poking around, as I did today, helped me decide to cancel my flight to Georgia and drive instead. I can spend a whole day driving on the Natchez Trace, another day in beautiful pet-friendly-everything Ocean Springs.

After three years of no road trips, I'm kind of over-the-moon excited about hitting the road again!  

Summer Sunday in San Antonio

Thanks to my new robotic device, this has been an awesome week! I'm calling this The Change of Life--a huge relief after almost three years of foot pain.  I'm grateful to modern medicine for inventing a device that starts at the spine and moves all the way to the toes! 

I still monitor break-through pain occasionally, but the post-anesthesia fog, sciatica, and foot pain have all virtually disappeared. 

Yesterday, I made four books; the day before three! Spending less time managing and relieving pain made me appreciate the  impact of chronic pain on so many people.  This week (knocking on wood as I write that!) has made me appreciate every hour of being able to do creative things--and social things!

Last night, Jan and I--and a few other friends--attended an extraordinary concert by Agarita and Imani Winds.  Two other nights, I met friends for dinner.  For so long, my social life has been stunted and unpredictable, and it was great fun to get out in the world and enjoy my friends. 

When Carlene was almost exactly my age, she wrote a book called Random Renderings of my Rememberings. She typed out her stories on beautiful deckled-edged stationery and packed them in a pink flowery box.  I have treasured that box for years and often taken it out to read a particular chapter that spoke to me.  But now!  Now I am, age-wise, where she was when she wrote it--and it touches me profoundly, like music.  

She writes about her family growing up on a farm in Georgia--and about the comfort of being with her beloved grandmother, Cana, after her 10-year old brother died.  At the age of seven, that death impacted her in so many ways.  As she grew older, she loved going to Cana's house "in town" and being close to church and school. 

I am turning off the horrific news and spending a quiet Sunday finishing this book!  It's the mother of my impulse to write this blog, a way of saving all the treasures and life lessons along the way. 

Here is an excerpt:

A Simple Sentence

If I were a writer, it would happen in the morning. There's an interlude between waking and rising when prayers and memories mingle and merge into a story.  Then an alarm rings, "Write it!"

A few days ago, in a state of melancholy and concert about aging friends, someone asked, "Why do people have to die?"

And so, a spark appeared this morning--a time I felt the reality of the statement, "You are going to die."  Fortunately, this was not relayed by an oncologist saying, "You are going to die" or even a sermon plea from a pulpit promising "You are going to die."

With an awareness as real as the tall steel tripod that held a windmill while it did its pumping work, or the simple barrel bearing weight for a long wide board to be a see-saw, the word, are, took the shape of a fulcrum--and still moves me back and forth like a lever. 

This sentence is not something I dwell on, even now, but the thread of it that settled in me along the way, and with which my life experiences have been quilted, is the support that keeps me afloat and healthy.  Mu gratitude could fill a lake.

February 23, 2002

Grantchester

Pretty sure Geordie is on his third vicar-assistant in Season 10.  

It's never quite clear how Inspector (Geordie) Keating manages to make friends with each new vicar and drag him into the murder case, but in all 10 seasons, it's a detective and a preacher who become partners in crime solving.  

Every episode has a murder, of course--or what would Geordie do?  But the charm of this Masterpiece series rests on the interactions, romances, and collisions among the characters in Grantchester. 

We have Leonard and his partner who finally came out as gay a few seasons back.  The on-again, off-again relationship between Geordie's secretary and one of the detectives on his team. Geordie's marriage to Cathy has had some bumps along the way, but they now seem solid --just when Geordie discovers his son dressing up like a girl in this season.

And of course, there is the college of Oxbridge, site of a few random murders.

Over ten years, the vicarage housekeeper (Mrs. M) has moved from a typical homophobic woman of her times to a fiercely protective mother-figure to Leonard.  The developments in the characters along the way has made this one of PBS' best shows. 

"Error Occurred"--again.

 I'm having technical difficulties--again!

Below is a video of Elena, our rodeo girl, racing around barrels!

But you can't see it because it won't upload.  Trust me, the girl is GOOD on horseback.  

Theodore, Franklin, Eleanor, and Norwegian royalty

I'm spending my weekend with the Roosevelts, thanks to public television.  (Trump and his minions would have PBS and NPR defunded, of course, as part of his mission to make Americans as small-minded as possible.) I can't even imagine what I'd have done without these three platforms for lifelong education and inspiration. 

A pair of excellent counterpoints to the focus on our current administration (if you use that word, loosely) are these two offerings on PBS: :

The Atlantic Crossing 

and

Ken Burns' The Roosevelts, An Intimate History

In the former, "inspired by historical events," eight episodes dramatically recreate the years of America and Norway pre- and through World War II.  While the madman Hitler takes over Europe with megalomania and excruciating cruelty, all nations are in peril.   

The crown prince of Norway and his family cross the Atlantic in 1939 and are befriended by Franklin and Eleanor.  A year later, all hell breaks loose in Norway--a country who thought itself safe due to its neutrality.  

Back when history was taught as dull facts, I was never interested.  But now, thanks to the brilliance of historians and storytellers like Ken Burns and David McCollough and so many others, history comes to life.  

After watching Atlantic Crossing, I couldn't resist re-watching the Ken Burns special all over again.  I'd watched it years ago, but that was before we lived in a country with its own madman at the helm.   

I highly recommend both of these.

Nathan's High School Graduation on Thursday

 

Now that my people have gone back to their own homes, I'm residing in white space, gazing at the snapshots in my mind of the past week. The art world also calls this "negative space," the empty areas around a focal point that create breathing room. 

When I began this foray into making collages, books, and photographs, I filled the entire page, the more the better. Gradually, over time, I've realized that a close up of one person, maybe two, against a white or blurry background can have more impact than a line of people against whatever background happens to be there.  It is, at least, a different kind of storytelling.  

For the sake of convenience, all of us carrying iPhones, most of the pictures we took were not particularly interesting, just thumbnails to jog our memory of a  good week together.  We line up.  We smile on cue.  The plates and residue of restaurant meals are in the foreground. Or racks of Spurs merch--as Marcus wanted to get a Number One shirt.  Three of them blowing out birthday candles, 47, 47, 20.  Two of them celebrating graduations;  Elena giving everyone rides on their four-wheeler and her horses. 

 

We went to Fredricksburg on Saturday, texting each other when we got separated: "I'm here, where are you?"

A handsome young man saw me struggling to walk and gallantly took my arm and led me across two streets.  An example of kindness used to be "helping an old lady across the street."  Outwardly grateful, I squirmed a bit inwardly realizing what part I played in that equation!

On Sunday, my ex and I are both there, guests in Will and Bonnie's new house. For years after our divorce, we were stiff and awkward around each other.

But on this day, there were moments of laughter at shared memories of the Sixties and Seventies.  We are the elders, the only ones in the room who remember Huisache, Magnolia, and Mistletoe, 1967-1969.  Or our cabin on Beckmann Hill in Helotes before Day was born, the voice of young Willie Nelson drifting through the cedars. We are the only ones who recall riding motorcycles on the ragged hills and into deep ravines. We're the only ones who recall our dingy little shared hometown in Georgia with all its life-shaping subtexts. 

Our children and grandchildren listened, laughed along, probably less at the content of our stories and more at the improbable scene of their grandparents chatting and laughing together!  Bonnie tells her father-in-law, "I have never heard you laugh like that!" 

Little flash bulbs in our minds illuminated a past that belonged only to us. 

When, inevitably, the time comes for them to disperse, I know we've reached the completion of this week of togetherness and I miss it before they're even belted into their cars. 

As they head back to their other lives--college, work, summer plans--I'll hear echoes of all these beloved people.

I wonder if we'll ever be together in this exact configuration again: two grandparents, long divorced, one of whom has a girlfriend he's never married; the oldest of the grandchildren with a newly minted graduate degree; the youngest of the grandsons about to start college.

When they leave my house on their last night, I feel alone in empty space for a while, wondering: Now what?   I feel like texting them: "I'm here.  Where are you?" 

Birthday Night at The Pearl

Marcus is 20!