New Years Eve

Most of the Christmas visitors have gone home.   The stacks of clean towels represent the fact that there were eleven of us here.    Everyone used the towels provided and now they are clean again.

The towels remind me of the summer of 1995, over 26 years ago.  We were preparing to move to Perth, Western Australia where my husband would be the US Consul General.  The house we were moving into was a large house with five bathrooms.   My mother took me shopping for towels and was telling anyone who would listen that I was moving into a mansion with five bathrooms.  She bought me a couple of sets of striped towels that were pink and green.  Also some flowered towels and I am sure some others.  I still have some of those towels but they are pretty thread bare.    But, my mother was so proud of me and of us.     I wish she had been able to visit us there.   By then she was disabled by the stroke she had when she was 62.  Five years younger than I am now- it made her old.    It's sad to think about.   And now she is gone.

Yesterday I sat with a dying friend.  She is in hospice and will die soon.  I held her hand.  We talked about funny memories.  People we have both known and loved or tolerated or avoided.  I am so lucky to have been her friend for more than 20 years.   We have gone through so much together.  She is not afraid to die.   I will miss her terribly.

And now we are entering a new year much like the last one.  COVID rates are going up.  People are still refusing to be vaccinated and are overcrowding our hospitals.

We are healthy.  The kids are healthy and strong and smart and independent.   

Looking at home movies (on DVDs now) we saw some movies of our firstborn as a baby and toddler.   We were so young!  I was thin and had long hair.   But the feeling that struck me the most as I saw that baby's smile and her sparkling eyes was how much joy there is in being a mother.   Nothing else has given me that.   It is deep and honest and primal.   

Happy New Year 2022!!

  

Merry Christmas

 

Solstice

 

The days will start getting longer now which I guess means winter is half way through.    I don't pay a whole lot of attention though. I will notice the changes but they are generally gradual enough that it's just what happens.

Two kids are here.  With their cats. Two more arrive in two more days.  Then the last four arrive on Christmas Day.

I honestly do not feel as stressed as I have at many past Christmases.   All the presents are wrapped and under the tree.   Two trees are up and decorated.    We have everything we need for various baking projects.  And if they don't happen that's fine too.

So I sit and knit.  I will not have the TV on all day like I usually do.  I am sure I can handle the TV withdrawal for a week or so/ or less.

Buddy, the dog, is still lame though he seems to be improving a bit.   I don't think he will ever be back to 100%, but then, who will.

It's stinkin' cold this morning!  Gotta take care of Buddy.  Then take a shower and get ready to go to the train station to pick up the next group of kids.

I feel like I should have some profound words here. But I don't

 Life is fluid. It flows.  Time passes.  Sometimes I feel like time doesn't move at all.  I can sit for hours and play solitaire on my phone.  Or knit.  And watch episode after episode of Law and Order or some other murder mystery.   Day after day.  With an occasional change- doing some dishes.  Making myself a sandwich.  Doing laundry.   I am not bored although it sounds boring.   I am pretty something:  content?  happy?  satisfied?  There's not a yes or no answer.   I think that the pandemic had to a large extent contributed to my current state of being.

Almost two years ago now, this all started.  I remember marveling at how little traffic there was compared to before the pandemic.  My full, scribbled on calendar was suddenly empty of entries aside from the occasional dentist appointment.    

I am getting used to the inertia.  

And then some big things happen and change my world.  A friend who is the age of my own daughter is diagnosed with cancer.    Lymphoma.  She has been in and out of the hospital for months.  In more than our.  Her cancer metastaticized to her brain.  She had to have brain surgery.   I don't know what the biopsies will show.   It is so scary.  She has young children who have not been allowed to visit the hospital and see their mommy.  She told her husband that she wants to pursue the most aggressive treatment possible.  Of course she does- she has small children.

Another friend, who is in her 80s is dying.  She has end stage cancer.  I spent several hours at the hospital with her recently.   She hardly opened her eyes.  She has no hair.  She spoke, but only a little.  But she was completely lucid.   She knows that she is dying.  It's just when.  Soon, I am sure.  Her son, who at 48, could be my child, has been working on orchestrating a move for his mother into hospice.   Of course there are roadblocks.  There are not enough beds in the hospice facility so that means that someone must die or move on somehow or another to make room.   

Sitting with my dying friend was not totally sad.  It was sobering.  It was very real.  But it was mostly gentle.  When her back was hurting I was able to offer a back rub.  It didn't make the pain go away, but it helped soothe the pain.    I know that I will miss her.  I already so.

When I was driving home from visiting the hospital I saw the most beautiful sunset.  I pulled over to the side of the road and turned on my flashers so I could get our of the car and just stare at the sky.

Was the world telling me something?  Was the sky opening up a space for another person to join in?

It's December already!

 I have been shopping online for Christmas gifts for the last few weeks.    I am getting excited about having all of the kids here!  

Courtney and Zach are flying in- on the "red eye" arriving at around 6:30 am.     Morgan and Kim are taking the train- arriving in the middle of the day- a day or two before C&Z.  Darcy and Jody are (I assume) driving up with two of her kids.   Austin will be driving down from Maine with his cat and Chance will be driving up from Richmond.  Also with a cat.

So we will have 10 more people in the house than we usually have.  Good thing we have such a big house!

Nick and I consider the master bedroom upstairs to be our bedroom.  There is a smaller master bedroom on the main floor that we think of as the guest room.  But, since Buddy has been hurt and unable to climb stairs, we have moved into the main floor bedroom.   I really miss our bedroom, but it's okay.  Buddy is more important.

We have a whole system.  Buddy steps onto a blanket and then we gently lift him into the laundry basket.  That goes onto the "trolley", which has wheels on it and we wheel Buddy to a grassy place to go to the bathroom.  The system works well, but Nick and I are getting more exercise than we can handle almost.

this is Buddy's makeshift stroller.

I ordered calendars, as I do every year and have done for longer than I can remember.  The photos on the calendar are all pictures that I have taken.  Somehow either the calendar makers or  myself got something mixed up.  The first page of the calendar is April.   From there, all of the months are in the correct sequence,  but January, the supposed first month, is somewhere in the back pages of the calendar.   I am sure it will be okay.  Just puzzling a bit.

Yesterday I wrote the annual letter that I send out with our Christmas cards.  I have been mentally composing the letter for a while now (I do that every year).   I was going to say how hard this year has been with the loss of friends due to Covid, cancer and accidents.   I was going to go on about how it's been a hard year for everyone.  But when I sat down to write, none of the gloom and doom came out at all.  I wrote a pleasant, chatty letter.   That's better than the gloomy one I had planned.

Thanksgiving 2021

 Thanksgiving came and went.   There was turkey, stuffing- both "regular"  and gluten free.   Cooked carrots, mashed potatoes, gravy and gluten free rolls.    Pumpkin pie and whipped cream after.

My sister Carol, and her son, Tom (I call him Tommy) were here.  My son Chance and my husband Nick.  It was a small gathering, but it was nice.  Chance and Tommy are first cousins, but have not really spent much time as adults (as Chance later said to me).

Carol's dog Leah and our Buddy was here too.  Poor Buddy is recovering from soft tissue damage to his back legs, so he is essentially crippled at the moment.

It's funny how, after a meal, it is so comfortable to stay at the dining room table and talk.    I think it's because we are all facing each other and so conversation is easy.   

Carol and I talked a lot about Thanksgivings past and how crazy families are.   Memories!

It was really a nice day!

Thanksgiving 2021

 I have not checked, but I suspect that I write something about the melancholy I feel as the holiday season approaches every year.  Of course the pandemic has exacerbated everything.

An online, Zoom  memorial service this afternoon doesn't help.

There will be a small number around our table for Thanksgiving this year.  We have had so many different Thanksgiving experiences over the years.  It was always a time shared with family unless we were overseas.  And then we grew our own family.

Our first Thanksgiving dinner overseas was 1996 in Bangkok.   I was pregnant (with the baby we lost).  I figured that there would be too much waste with a turkey, so we cooked a duck.  I had no idea that duck has so little meat!   Learned a lesson there.

In 1984 or 85, I cannot remember, we had a Thanksgiving gathering in our house in Tromso, Norway.  I cooked two turkeys:  one was ordered form the butcher shop in town, the other one we bought in Finland.  The Norwegian turkey did not have enough fat I guess.  It's leg bones broke in the oven.  The Finnish turkey was much meatier and juicy.  An American friend who worked in a hotel was able to get sweet potatoes .  There were some American high school kids- exchange students, living there and we had them for dinner.  I remember explaining in Norwegian,  that Courtney would be missing school that day.  How did I explain Thanksgiving in Norwegian?   The closest I could get was to say that it was the day we thank god for all we have to be thankful for.

In Taiwan, a group of us went to a friend's house for a pot luck dinner.  The host was to serve turkey.  Unfortunately it was discovered too late that the host's propane for the oven had run out before the turkey was fully cooked!

In China we had a community dinner.  I remember cooking two turkeys that year as well.   

Our family grew and grew over the years.  Family dinners were the norm.  Then the kids grew up and had lives of their own.  The older generation grew old and eventually they all died.

And now we are the older generation.   

And I find myself spending hours and dollars online ordering Christmas gifts.  All of the "kids" will be here for Christmas.  Their partners/ spouses and a few cats and kids too.

So I anticipate.  I grieve.  And I look forward to the joy.

1992