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

Life?

 Life.  Life.  It goes on and on.  I spend much of my time, and therefore my life, thinking about my kids.   How much I like them.  How much I miss them.  How much I wish I had been nicer and more patient with them.  All of them.

They are all adults and have been for a while.  My "baby" is 30!   When I was 30, I had my third child.  I had been married for 12 years.  I did not consider myself a child at all.

But then, when my mother forgot to call me on my birthday, or didn't write for a few weeks, I was a sad, tearful child again.  Feeling hurt.  "feeling sorry for myself".  That's what I was told I was doing when I was a kid and got upset.   I am sure I said hurtful words to my children too.  It's hard, and impossible to be the perfect parent that you think you should be.

The kids are all planning to be here for Christmas.  I am happy.  I am excited.  And I am nervous.  Will someone get mad at someone else.  Will we all be able to keep patient with each other.  Will they find Nick and I annoying?

I want to hold my babies faces in my hands, one at a time, and look into their eyes.  The eyes that used to gaze into mine as if I was their world, their universe.   All of them held my attention in their eye contact and love.

Nick and I were talking today about how seldom we "fight" these days.  We don't annoy each other as much or in as many ways as we used to.   Maybe we've figured out that fussing doesn't fix anything.   We "yell" sort of, but we always end up laughing.

I wonder if, as you get older and less hormonal, you become more mellow and reasonable?     I told Nick that I wish I had been able to be this mellow when the kids were kids.  But it is almost impossible.   You can have one kid yelling "wipe me" while another one is asking for something and yet another  is beating up a sibling.  There is nowhere for mellow and peace to find itself.

I recall the 10:00 TV shows.  Whatever was the popular show of the day, I would stay up to watching it "China Beach", Thirty Something"  "Northern Exposure".  "Hillstreet Blues " and "Cagney and Lacey".    I am sure there are more.  That was MY time.  The house was quiet. Maybe the youngest one would sit with me nursing himself to sleep.  But it was the only time I relaxed.

Lately I have been finding myself thinking about the two I didn't have.   That first baby would be 44 now.  I always imagined it was a girl although I never knew.  Maybe that's the baby that would grow up and make me into a grandmother.   Maybe that would have been the one that was mellow and helped me be a mellower mother.    We talked about the name Symphony Sky.   Yesterday we were watching something on TV and one of the characters was a woman named "Sky".   We both noticed it and talked about Symphony Sky.    The other lost baby was too early to really have much of a fantasy life about.   It was just a piece of me for a few short weeks and then it was gone.   A blob in the toilet.  A dream not realized.

Everyone grieved for the first baby.  Nick-named "Nabisco".  Everyone knew I was pregnant.  I looked it.  I planned for a baby- even bought baby clothes and cloth diapers.    The other one- Nick and I knew.  And then it was gone.

This is my 95 year old friend holding hands with her first great grandchild.

Halloweens Past

When we were living in Tromsø we did not celebrate Halloween.  At least, the Norwegians didn't.

But, Nick was going to Oslo on business at the embassy, and since the embassy was having a Halloween party for the American kids in the embassy community, it seemed like it would be fun to take our three to have some Halloween fun as well.

 I made the kids' costumes.  The most challenging part for me was trying to figure out what the Norwegian word for the color "orange" is.  The fruit, orange is not necessarily the color we have in the States.   Same goes for pumpkins.  A pumpkin in much of the world is seen only as a vegetable and might not be very orange at all.  So, I told the lady in the fabric store that I needed "carrot" colored fabric.    That worked out just fine!   I am sure she wondered why anyone would want to make something carrot colored!

We packed up our suitcases, costumes and all and flew to Oslo with Nick.   We were staying in a hotel.  Since Nick had to work, I was in charge of getting the kids to the embassy party.

It was cool enough to wear coats and jackets.  I remember wondering what people thought of Courtney.  She had a dress on over her tutu, and a coat over that.  Of course Morgan had a pumpkin hat on.  And Darcy was dressed as a clown.

I just remember standing there waiting for a taxi and feeling very self conscious.  And a bit silly too.  I restrained myself from laughing out loud for fear of being hauled off to the loony bin.  I suppose they have them here!

 Notice "The Pumpkin".   Nick's mother gave it to us so we could have seasonal decorations wherever in the world we might be living.  It is in the pictures of the kids that were taken in 1985.  And now, it is in our house in Aldie Virginia in 2021 

 

 

It's Fall

 The temperature are falling.  Today is warm, but the mornings and evenings are cool.   Soon to be cold and even freezing!

I brought out some fall decorations from the basement.