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Category: Introspection

  • A Change is Coming

    IMG_4823 I had to sew today.  I absolutely had to sew today.    And I have very little to show for it — 12 little pieces of ribbon sewn on a stack of towels.  But for this I had to clear a corner of the table to set up the machine.  For this I had to empty out several boxes, cursing under my breath, as I wondered where I had put the power cord for the sewing machine.  But it was a significant gesture for me, an action filled with promise both because it required sewing, even if only in a temporary sort of space, and because putting new towels in the kitchen cabinet also is an act of promise on the home front as well.

     

    IMG_4825 Tomorrow is aide transfer day, a day I have been looking anticipating for a long long time.  I thought it would be today, but I learned that this was a misunderstanding.  I got the word from the current aide, that it would be Tuesday, although he now denies this.  I should not be surprised.  I remember the discussion well, but I would say that our soon to be ex care person has a tenuous grasp of facts.  I say this remembering how many times we argued last week about whether April 25th had been on Friday, as he insisted, or Monday.  But this is the least of it.  Suffice it to say that our aide is well meaning and has good intentions.  Also let it be known that good intentions are most emphatically not enough.

     

    IMG_4833 Although I have learned to take "common sense" with a, pardon the cliché, "grain of salt", I am constantly reminded of that old proverb, which G used to love to quote:

     

    "He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, is a fool….Shun him."

     

    In short, I can expect that people who grew up with different experiences to know and see the world differently than I.  I recognize that what I think of as "common knowledge" might not be at all common for those who grew up in wildly different environments.  But I do expect a certain ability to adapt, and ability to listen to explanations and to learn, and sensitivity to our wishes and the reasoning behind them.

     

     

    IMG_4832 Not that life will be perfect.  All problems will not disappear.  I do not expect this.  At this point I only hope for less stress.  That, in and of itself, will be a blessing.

     

    I have learned that I do not suffer fools gladly, and the pressure to be kind and considerate and tolerant has been more difficult than I expected.  

     

    But it is spring.  Beauty is around us.  I shall hope for better both from my spouse's next aide and from myself.

  • Morning on the Hudson

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    Sometimes life catches me by surprise and takes my breath away.  This photo doesn't capture the glory of the light on the Hudson River yesterday morning, but it is close enough.

     

    Saturday had been cold, dreary and rainy, a day befitting my mood which was sad, depressed and lonely. Sunday filled me with joy and accomplishment and refilled my reserves and reminded me of all the good things, the things I have accomplished, the things I love about where I live.

     

    I have no regrets about the decisions I have made; they have been the right decisions for me and the people I love.  But accepting a course of action, even knowing it is the right thing to do, does not necessarily always make actually living with the consequences of the decision easy. Sometimes the weight of responsibility, of the choices I have made, seems like a burden to heavy to bear and despair overtakes me.  All I want is my house back.  All I want is my life back.

     

    But this is my life.  These are my choices. And I knew what I was doing even if I didn't fully appreciate the repurcussions.  I suspect that this is a necessary state, this not fully understanding what we are getting ourselves into until after we have jumped in feet first.    Otherwise why even get out of bed in the morning?

     

    But then, if I hadn't gotten out of bed I wouldn't have seen the sun on the Hudson.

     

    And I am lucky to have friends who support me and support me when the dark winds blow and when the sun shines through, who know that these moments are just wisps and hold my hands as I walk through the fog.

     

     

     

  • Burnt

    Yesterday I packed up my kitchen and put it away.

     

    No, that is not exactly true, but it felt like I was putting my kitchen, and by extension a part of myself on hold, like I had made some kind of bargain with the devil without reading the fine print.  I brought my sweetie home.  I was able to start carving out a niche for myself again, only to find that the things that are important to me are slowly being chipped away.

     

    Here's how it happened.

     

    On Monday evening I went to use a particular pot, a beloved pot, and as I pulled it out of the cabinet I noticed that the color had changed from the soft gray of stainless steel to a deep burnished orange-brown on the inside with orange and black spots all over the outside.  This did not scrub off, even with Barkeeper's friend.  It had melded with the metal.  I was, at that point, far too upset to cook.

     

    I did ask E what happened to the pan, and he said it wasn't his fault, he made popcorn using oil from the "waste oil" can, the jar where I store used oil waiting to be discarded.  

     

    Now, one shouldn't use the old oil, but the more I think about it, there had to be more than that because the pan had to be very hot, hotter than is necessary for popcorn, for the oil to scorch into the metal like that.  I've made popcorn in that pan.  I've fried chicken in that pan.  I suppose I should be grateful he did not start a fire, and I am, but I am also still sad about my pan.  

     

    But overheating is an ongoing problem..  Countless silicone spatulas, the kind that are supposed to withstand 600 degree heat, have been melted, including my favorite, the one I use for eggs in the morning, even though it was in the jar labeled "gluten free do not use."  I suppose I shall have to change that to "Mardel only do not use."   He always cooks on high heat. He leaves the pans on the heat with nothing in them.  I smell the hot metal and the burning oil from across the house long before I see the smoke.  Although they are only things, I can't help but feel like my babies are being slowly tortured in front of me.

     

    I've purchased new utensils to separate gluten from gluten-free.  One of my favorite nonstick skillets is scratched and warped.  I need a new slow cooker.  Now I need to replace my 18 year old 5.5 quart Demeyere casserole as well. It is not the price.  I am just as upset about my green silicone egg turner and by favorite blue colander as I am about that pan, although the thought of constantly replacing things is daunting.

     

    Nor is the problem exclusively with this aide, it has been ongoing.  It is a question of care, and the people that come to help G just don't take care, not with things.  They are good with G, and ultimately G is more important than things.  I know this.  And yet with each thing that is lost I feel little bits of myself being lost as well.  I can say that G is more important, but I can't say that the things are not important because each thing is purchased with care and thought:  for years I have been eliminating the chaff, saving only the essential, the things that matter to me, and now those things are being slowly taken away.

     

    I can teach someone not to take a hot pan off high heat and immediately run cold water over it.  I can teach someone not to plunge the electric base of a slow cooker into a sink full of water.  But then someone else comes, and I can't think of everything I need to teach them because so much of this is second nature to me.   I can't come running and screaming into the kitchen every time a pan has been left on high heat empty for 10 minutes "so it will get hot" when I smell it burning from 20 or 30 feet away.  I can't teach someone to take care of things that they don't care about.  I care.  They are my things. I feel ripped apart with each gash in the finish of my favorite skillet.  And yet we need them, the aides.  I can't abandon G just for a spatula or a pan or any other thing that may exist in the house.

     

    I have to adapt. My only alternative is to put the things I care about away until this phase of our lives passes.  I took great pleasure in my heavy "good" pans, I took care of them, I loved using them.  As I cleaned them one last time, polishing the copper on the heavy copper skillet, I felt like I was saying goodbye to old dear friends.  I felt like I had lost "my" kitchen, like there was no point in cooking anymore, like I had lost a part of myself. 

     

    I put up new pans.  Not bad pans, a relatively inexpensive set from Macy's.  It is better to just have pans I don't care about. I don't care about these pans.  I don't care about using them.  I don't care about loosing them. But I also realize it is not about pans at all.  Things melt, things burn, it is a normal part of life, and in normal life, at home with family, I would laugh these things off.  

     

    But this is not about normal life, or not about normal life as I am prepared to embrace it. Even though I made the decision to make these changes, I hadn't really considered all the implications.  I suppose decisions would never be made if we actually considered all the implications involved.  It is about change, and control, and being dragged kicking and screaming to accept changes I was not really ready to make.  It is about opening up the walls to the cozy little sanctuary that is/was my home and accepting change rather than building walls with things. One moment I am embracing the future, and another I am retreating into the past, holding my pan up like a shield.

     

    Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own house, like it is slipping away from me and I am powerless to stop it.  Here I am trying to reclaim my life but I gain a little something only to lose something else.  Life seems to be a lot like a teeter-totter, first I'm up, then I'm down, and I can't quite find the balance point.  I know we will get there, but sometimes it seems that I hit the ground rather hard.

  • My Eye and I

    I went to the opthamologist today.  As expected my eyes were dilated and not surprisingly, even with two sets of dark glasses, by the time I spent 45 minutes driving home in the bright sunlight I had a headache and had to retire to a darkened room.

     

    This week is going so well.  Yesterday I was depressed because I finally have the floors I've always wanted, and although that prospect should and does make me happy, it also made me sad because I felt there was nothing nearly as exciting to look forward to in the immediate future.

     

    Not that I'm really complaining, I think I just needed a bit of self-indulgent wallowing.  Increasingly I think we all need these moments or days when we embrace the pain and despair that is also part of human existence.  Wallowing allows us to take a peek inside ourselves to see what really matters.  Or perhaps we just need to allow ourselves a day of rest.  Too much business is probably bad for the self in its purest sense.

     

    Anyway, as I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, both cats at my side,  I started wondering about  my eyes.  There is nothing going on.  My eyes are good, I just need new glasses, which I already knew.  I can't read a knitting chart which is why I am basically knitting stockinette right now.  In fact I have trouble reading at all, which doesn't seem to make me want to read any less, it just means that I get a lot of headaches from the effort of trying to read things I can't see.  

     

    But that isn't really what I was thinking about.   I was thinking about eye-dominance and vision.  Eventually this made me get off the bed and squint at the bright light of my computer screen.  I wanted to know why I am strongly left eye dominant if my right eye is my stronger, less myopic, eye.

     

    I did learn a few things:

    Eye dominance and handedness are unrelated.

    More people are right-eye dominant than are left-eye dominant.

    Of those people whose nearsightedness is not evenly distributed between their eyes (anisometropia), the more myopic eye is usually the dominant eye.  (Raise hand here).

     

    I learned lots of other cool things like how the fact that my eyes are so anisometropic might be a contributing factor in why I also have no depth perception.  And that although people have said I have "lazy eye", I do not in fact have amblyopia, but I do have a strong tendency for that right eye to wander a bit, especially when I am tired.

     

    But I didn't find out why.  Is there some advantage to more focused on that which is close at hand rather than that which is further away?  Well, is there and survival advantage as opposed to say the advantage it confers for sewing, knitting, and reading which are probably not highly necessary skills in terms of basic survival?  And is there a connection between the focus of the eye on the world immediately around the person and the internal focus on the I?  Would I be more outwardly focused if my dominant eye were more outwardly focused? It seems there is more to ponder

     

  • February Made Me Shiver

    I seem to be having a little motivational crisis.   All I really want is to go back to bed and stay there until spring with perhaps a few forays into the kitchen for coffee and brownies and a stack of books.  

     

    It is easy to say I am tired of winter, and it is true, I am tired of winter.  But so is everyone at this time of year and this has been a winter particularly trying to human patience.  But blaming it on winter is such a cliché, even if it does hold a kernel of the truth.   Winter is not over yet, there is still February, and February somehow seems to be both the longest and the shortest month, long because there is usually at least one brutal snowstorm waiting in the wings, long because we are all tired of winter, long because spring doesn't really start to come until April. In February, April seems like a long long way away.

     

    IMG_4453 I was cold all day yesterday.  I was wearing a warm sweater, the thermostat was set to 70 degrees.  But still I was cold.  Truthfully, the house wasn't really 70 degrees except in a few warm protected spaces and the smaller rooms, which are all bedrooms and therefore all the more appealing as a place to curl up and hibernate.  This is the downside of having a big contemporary house where the rooms are all large open spaces and the entire west wall is glass. Glass facing the Hudson River is beautiful, but it also exposes us to the bitter force of icy winds blown across the country to our house, battering our glass walls, sending shivers of cold through the house so powerfully that no oil furnace can keep up.  A few nights below zero, a day or two with no sun, a bit of wind and a chill begins to set in.  No wonder I love to knit big thick comfy sweaters this time of year. I live in a scaled down contemporary version of a drafty old castle.  At least it warms up more quickly when the sun finally reemerges.

     

    The whiteness of snowfall that I loved so much in the early part of the winter seems oppressive now.  Yesterday the whiteness seemed to glare at me, to taunt me, and it was not accompanied by the soft enveloping silence of many snowfalls.  Instead we had wind, the roar of wind against the glass, the cold fingers of icy winds through the windowpanes. We do have insulating blinds, but they are not enough, and the wind seeps around the corners and curls down to the floor, creeping into one's toes and up into one's bones. This was a cold brittle whiteness, the whiteness of emptiness and despair.

     

    Or at least that is how it seemed to me.  But then I know this really isn't just about winter.  It is about fear. It took me all day to write yesterday's post, not that it was all that much, but I just couldn't do it.  The idea that things were going well just wouldn't make the leap from my brain to my fingers to the keyboard.  My hands would freeze up.  My brain would burp.  I would think "I need a cup of coffee", or "I should run some laundry" or whatever it could throw at me to keep me from admitting that things are going well.  Am I afraid of happiness, of good things?  No I don't really think so.  I am happy to be happy.  But I am also fearful.  I am afraid to get to wrapped up in this happiness, to count on things too much, to be vulnerable.  Instead of saying things are going well, I fret about all the things I haven't yet done and think how much better they will be when I finish.  

     

    I am thinking about how much safer I will feel when I finish things.  I am afraid that this happiness, this improvement in G is only temporary.  Oh hell, I know it is only temporary, I know the facts of dementia and the statistics.  Of course no person is a statistic and the reversal might not be so bad.  But my experience is that the reversal will occur, and I will not be prepared and so I am afraid to get too comfortable with this happiness because I am afraid it will get jerked out from under me.  This has been my experience.  But what am I actually afraid of?  What is safety?  Why do I think that doing things will make me safe?  They will not.  They merely distract me.  Winter is cold and brittle.  I don't want my heart to become cold and brittle but I am afraid to bring it too far out in the open as well lest it be caught unawares by a fierce cold wind.  But if I hide behind doing I will miss the warmth of just being in this moment.  The fall will be no less harsh because I was afraid to feel the joy of the heights but the loss may, in fact be greater.  And yet I am afraid.  

     

    I am thinking that today, faced with whiteness, freed from the obligation of need, of work, of responsibility to the world outside, is a time to celebrate the world inside.  Today may be a day to snuggle.  Perhaps I should give it a try.

     

    * Title taken from American Pie by Don McLean

  • First snow of 2011

    Only six inches this time instead of the 20 we had after Christmas.  But it is still just as pretty.

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    I love the way snow blankets the world in silence and the almost mystical whiteness before the plows scrape the snow into gray-brown piles and sounds of civilization resume.

  • Happy New Year

    The new year is dawning shiny and bright with promise.  

     

    Although I do have goals for the new year, they do not, at this point, comprise a specific list of bullet-point items that I wish to share here.

     

    However it can be said that:

     

    * There will be sewing. (yes, it is true)

    * There will be knitting.

    * There will be thoughts/posts on fashion, style, outfits, etc.

    * There will be many changes and projects around the house and yard.

    * There will be reading.

    * There will be music.

    It sounds like a pretty fabulous year, doesn't it?  The year I stop putting all my dreams on hold.  The year of Mardel.

     

     

     

  • Thursday morning

    I haven't found a new groove yet, not that everything is rushed or panicked, just not quite settled.  This morning, however, the house is quiet and I am the only one awake. I always enjoy these silent mornings. When G was away the mornings were my best time; nights were the worst.  But even before, before G would wake when I would wake, and wake me frequently during the night, I would rise first and enjoy the quiet time in the house, time where I could sit and reflect and let my thoughts wander, where life seemed slower and calmer whether I was engaged in some chore or activity or just staring out at the Hudson River letting my mind rest and wander. 

     

    Even as I sit and write this however, I can see myself starting to itch with busy-ness, with that culturally inbred idea that it is time to get busy.  "The early bird catches the worm", "Time is money", these shiboleths still haunt me even as I realize that true as they may be, they are not always relevant to life or even necessarily desirable maxims on which to shape one's days.  "Slow and steady wins the race" or "take time to smell the daisies" come to mind, reminding me that sometimes what is important can be lost in the rush.   In my lifetime alone everyday life has grown seemingly exponentially faster, more rushed, more busy, more accomplished.  I am not convinced that we are better for it.

     

    And here I am writing a post that is completely different from the post I intended to write and my time has flown.  G is up and restless following what was apparently a restless night, and Moisés and Sam have somehow managed to knock a painting off a wall.  The day has officially begun and I must go.

     

     

  • Monday

    I'm back online and putting my life, or at least my house, back together again.  It seems like my house is part of who I am so I am feeling like this is as much my life as it is just the place I live.   A few things seem obvious now.

     

    I was crazy to decide to switch the sewing room and master bedroom at the same time as I am putting in new floors and redoing the two bedrooms at the other end of the house.  It was twice as much work, or more like three times as much work.  Now pretty much everything we own is piled up in the living room, dining room, and family rooms and it is not a pretty sight.  

     

    At the same time, I still feel that even though every muscle in my body aches, that this was the best time to do all of this because there are no distractions and no one's life except my own is upended by all the chaos.  G has a limited tolerance for chaos, although a higher tolerance than I for everyday mess, so it is good that he is not here.  And given past experience, I also know that if I didn't do it now it would never get done.  I felt suffocated under the weight of too many things left  undone, and this overwhelming urge to do and finish has been very therapeutic. If I was having trouble sleeping when G first went to the hospital and rehab, I am not having that problem now.  I fall into bed exhausted and I awake eager to face another day.

     

    I have too much stuff and some of it has to go, including books, fabric, and yarn.  I believe in having a stash, and in having materials at hand to foment creativity.  But there is too much.  G was not the only one clinging to the past.  And as I have a renewed appreciation for the tenuousness of life, I also realize that I don't want to be faced with having to move this much stuff ever again, that stuff is a burden, and much of it needs to be let go.  Neither G nor I are minimalists, we both tend to collect things we love or that inspire us, and there will always be a wealth of things in our lives.  This too is part of who we are.  We both bristle at being told that we should save less (don't even bother telling me what I don't need) but we have both also realized that we need less. Balance must be found.   I will still be sorting through my things when G returns at the end of the week; we will tackle his closet and his collections together when he returns. 

     

    Oddly, in the midst of all this chaos I am strangely happy and happy with my home, happier than I have been in a long time.  I am eager for G to come home and I hope he likes the changes I have made, but I won't be devastated if he doesn't.  I have done what I had to do to make the house easier for him, and also what I had to do to make the house better for me, and I had put that later part, the "better for me" part aside for far too long.  This house was his long before I was added to the mix and although it has become more ours over the years, it was never a place we created together, a place without its own history, a history more his than mine, and often a reminder of failed expectations and dreams lost.  I admit that I have banished much of the furnishings that dated from that time before me, that harkened back to life with that first family, and that the new furnishings reflect my taste, although I have tried to keep his preferences in mind at every step along the path.  Perhaps it is about time.

     

    I realize that I may not be in this house forever and yet now I am happy here again and could happily stay here for a long time.  This space, that felt like a prison not all that long ago, now feels filled with promise and I hope it will continue to feel this way.  I hope that G's homecoming will be filled with promise as well, that the changes I have made are good, and that he will see the hope and love behind the changes, not just the loss.  And when it becomes time to go, and this will happen because the world is a tenuous place, it will be sad and but also easier because of all the work I have already done.  I realize that we were both trapped by changes that were happening faster than we could adapt to them, and trapped by the weight of memory and expectation.  The weight of our collective past was tying us down both spiritually and physically.    I hope that we are coming to a place where some of that burden has been lifted, and we can shake out the remaining cobwebs and just enjoy what live has to offer.

  • Planning: Full of Promise and yet Bittersweet

    Yesterday I took a little slice of time and played around with graph paper.

     

    I was planning my new studio.  It sounds frivolous considering how little sewing I've done.  I haven't done all that much knitting in the last week either, I think about 6 to 8 rows in 4 days. But of course I will sew and knit again.

     

    Much of the past week has been spent coming to terms with the fact that my house will never be the same again and thinking about how best to accommodate the future.  Oh, I am planning for G to come home, and it appears he will be coming home far sooner than previously anticipated.  And although I want him to come home, I also know that home will never be the same.  I am advised that he will come home with a walker, possibly a back-up wheelchair, and very likely 24 hour care, and at least night-time care.    This means he will be confined to the main part of the house, that he will not be coming up the roughly quarter-flight to the master bedroom, that he will sleep in his own room with an aide or "sitter" on hand.  I don't think he realizes this yet.  I don't think my body and my soul have quite come to terms with this yet either, although my intellect is weighing the options and calculating the potential outcomes.

     

    During the time G was in the hospital and now, at the rehab place, dealing with all the uncertainty has forced me to readjust to the house, to come to terms with it differently than before.  The house seems so different from what it was but a few weeks ago.  At first, I could only spend the evenings in the kitchen and the bedroom even though I could not sleep.  Now I have reacquainted myself with the house and I have thought extensively about what changes needed to be made to make the house work for G when he comes home.  And even though he is making great progress and will be ready to be home before I will have everything in place, he will still not be coming up the stairs and we will still have separate rooms.

     

    Which still leaves me with a space that was once our space and which will now, by necessity, be my space alone.  Night-time is the hardest.  Our bed is no longer ours and it is haunted by his absence.  It is quite possible that in order to cope with change I will have to take what was ours and make something separate, something which is mine.

     

    And this is how I found myself with occupied with a tape measure and some graph paper making plans.  My sewing room is in a bedroom right next to the master bedroom.  It is is small 9.5 x 10 feet, although it is not the smallest "bedroom" in the house, it is the second-smallest.  It will become my bedroom and the larger room, the room that was the master will become my new sewing space.  It is larger, at 13 x 16 it is the largest private room in the house, the largest room that can be closed off from the rest by means of a door.  All the public rooms are open to one another.  It will be my new sewing space, and even though it is slightly more than twice the size of my current space, it will be fairly full, but I think a very workable space.  

     

    The seeds have been planted for this new space, but it is not my first priority, not yet.  I still need to prepare for G's return; I need figure out exactly what will happen, and when.  Perhaps I am still clinging to the hope that the guest room can become our room and not just G's room.  I do realize that this may be a futile dream, but I am not quite ready to surrender. I also realize that regardless of what happens I will need to create a different space for myself, a space that is a new space, not a space haunted by memories.  But I am not ready to embrace that space quite yet, just to acknowledge that it is coming.