There is a bit of a panic. And because this is a dream, even though just a minute before the bus may have been sitting at a bus stop I recognize somewhere in Seattle, now we’re on a long, winding road going down an unfamiliar mountain.
Continue reading Control
Continue reading Relativity
Once, only once, I got a room in a different place, a motel even closer to Grandma’s. It cost just as much as a night at the Red Lion, but the rooms were tinier, and everything in the hotel was cheaper looking/feeling.
Continue reading Lavender ice
I didn’t understand most of those nuances when I was a kid. The modern version of the holiday, celebrated on the last Monday in May, didn’t even exist until I was a fifth-grader, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act went into effect.
Grandma observed it faithfully. Every year, as May rolled around, she would begin calling distant relatives and old family friends. Grandma knew where just about every person descended from her own grandparents was buried, and she made certain that someone who lived nearby was putting flowers on the graves of those relatives by Memorial Day. She took care of all the family members buried within a couple hours drive of her home in southwest Washington.
She was putting flowers on the grave of my Great-aunt Maud (Grandma’s sister-in-law) seven years ago on the Friday before Memorial Day when she died. My step-grandfather said he was getting in position to take a picture of her beside the grave and the flowers (there are hundreds and hundreds of photos of Grandma beside graves with flowers on them in her photo albums) when she suddenly looked up, said, “I don’t feel good!” and pitched over.
One weekend she had blown out the candles on the cake celebrating her 84th birthday. The following Friday, while putting flowers on Great-aunt Maud’s grave, she died. And one week after that a bunch of us were standing at her graveside. It was just down to a few family members, and we were at that stage where you’re commenting on how pretty the flowers that so-and-so that no one had heard from in years were, when someone asked, “Isn’t grandpa’s grave nearby?”
Grandpa had died 23 years earlier, and was buried in one of a pair of plots he and Grandma had bought many years before. And after Grandma re-married, she and our step-grandfather had bought two more plots close by.
Anyway, as soon as someone asked that, my step-grandfather’s eyes bugged out, he went white as a sheet, and said, “Oh, no!” He was obviously very distressed as he hurried toward his car. Several of us followed, worried that he was having some sort of medical issue.
Nope. He and Grandma had been driving to various cemeteries all week long before her death, putting silk-bouquets that Grandma had made on each relative’s grave. Aunt Maud’s was meant to be the next-to-the-last stop on their journey. Grandpa’s silk flower bouquet was still in the trunk of the car. My step-grandfather was beside himself. He’d cried so much that week, you wouldn’t have thought he could cry any more, but there he was, apologizing to Grandma’s spirit for forgetting about the last batch of flowers, and not finishing her chore—for not getting flowers on Grandpa George’s grave by Memorial Day.
The next year, several of us had the realization that without Grandma around, none of us knew who to call to get flowers put on Great-grandma and Great-grandpa’s graves back in Colorado. None of us were sure in which Missouri town Great-great-aunt Pearl was buried, let alone who Grandma called every year to arrange for the flowers. Just as we weren’t certain whether Great-great-aunt Lou was buried in Kansas or was it Missouri? And so on, and so on. One of my cousins had to track down the incident report filed by the paramedics who responded to our step-grandfather’s 9-1-1 call just to find out which cemetery Great-aunt Maud was in.
Some years before her death, Grandma had transferred the ownership of the plot next to Grandpa to Mom. So Mom’s going to be buried beside her dad. Mom mentions it whenever we visit the graves, and I don’t know if she realizes how much it chokes me up to think about it.
We had put the flowers in place. We had both taken pictures. Mom always worries that she won’t remember where Grandpa’s grave is (it’s seared in my head: two rows down from Grandma, four stones to the south). Michael helped Mom take a wide shot picture that has both Grandma’s and Grandpa’s spots in it.
I thought we were going to get away with both of us only getting a little teary-eyeed a few times, but as we were getting back into the car, Mom started crying. Which meant that I lost it.
Grandma’s been gone for seven years, now. But every time we drive down to visit Mom, there is a moment on the drive when my mind is wandering, and I’ll wonder what Grandma will be doing when we get there. And then I remember I won’t be seeing her. It took me about a dozen years to stop having those lapses about Grandpa. I suspect it will be longer for Grandma. After all, she’s the one who taught me the importance of Those Who Matter
I have remembered all of that, most particularly the part about thinking, quite firmly to myself, that I need to remember this.
But I cannot, for the life of me, remember what it was I needed to change my Twitter name to, nor why I wanted to do it, nor why I thought it was so important to remember to change it.
One of the last tattered shreds of my denial was stripped away when I started coughing at the office Thursday. Since a lot of other people were coughing that day, at least I can’t be solely to blame if a bunch of people are out sick, again.
Thursday evening my left ear clogged. By Friday morning I had a slight ear ache, a sore (rather than merely scratchy) throat, a cough the woke me up several times, and had been sweating all night, again.
Friday is normally a work from home day for me. The doctor was able to work me in fairly quickly. While the physician’s assistant said I had no fever (98.4 is a fever for me), when the doctor check later, she said, “98.4! That’s a fever for you!” because she’s seen how when I’m not sick I often had a temperature of 95 or lower.
She is fairly certain that I don’t have a bacterial infection in the ear and sinuses. She told me to avoid being around people until my fever was totally gone, as I was not just certainly contagions, by certainly very contagious.
Because of the cough, she was going to prescribe the usual codeine cough syrup, but while she was pulling the information up on the computer to send the prescription to my pharmacy, she noticed that my insurance now considers that a mid-level drug with the higher co-pay, but there’s a fancier version of the codeine cough syrup, that’s timed-released, and has antihistamines in addition to the cough suppressant, which is in the lowest tier for my insurance.
She said this stuff is more reliable for keeping the cough and other symptoms down long enough to get a good night’s sleep, and the only thing I would need to remember is that I shouldn’t take anything else that has antihistamines in it while I’m on the syrup.
Seemed like a good idea to me.
I’ve been having nightmares since I got on the stuff. Each time I took a nap Friday, and throughout Friday night, I had nightmares. One of them so disturbing that, even though I’m not normally a superstitious person, I can’t make myself say what it was for fear it might come true.
I re-read up on the side effects, and they did mention that hallucinations is a very rare side effect, but the old codeine cough syrup I’ve been on before lists that, as well. So I wasn’t complete sure it was the cough syrup that was doing it.
The doctor had told me I only needed to use it at night, but could use it in the day if the cough was bothering me. So I experimented not taking it in the daytime. I’ve been having to stop and nap every three or four hours since Friday morning, so I slept a couple times where none of the stuff was in my system.
No nightmares.
Late Saturday night I was coughing and had the sore itchy eyes, so I took a spoonful before going back to bed.
No coughing fits woke me in the middle of the night. But two different nightmares did.
So, I’m not sure that the benefit of no coughing fits waking me up is worth the downside of the nightmares. Admittedly, the night I was last coughing, I was woke up far more than two times with the coughing, sore throat, et cetera. I suppose that’s an improvement.
I think next I will trying taking only half a spoonful at bedtime?
There’s never a good time to be incapacitated by allergies, but this week I have a zillion deadlines at work, and my boss is out of the country under circumstances where he’s not available even via e-mail. So I’m scrambling to make my deadlines and hoping that my brain isn’t too fogged up to get things done.
Which means what mental energy I have is all going into work this week, and not to my personal writing or to any non-work projects. I only took three naps to get through Tuesday and two showers. It’s amazing how good it feels to hold your head under a stream of hot water when you’re so congested that even your teeth ache.
A shower is truly a magical invention.
I wish I had something profound to say. Other than, pass me a kleenix, please?
Some people who do have a great relationship with a great mother still have some issues with the Mother’s Day holiday. Some of them wish they could have children, but for whatever reason don’t, and Mother’s Day becomes just another reminder of how much society still measures a woman’s worth by whether or not she’s a mom. Some of them had a great relationship with their own mothers, but those mothers are no longer among the living, and mother’s day is a very painful reminder of that loss.
I’m well aware that I quite lucked out in the mom department. Certainly compared to some folks I know. I’ve never had my mom tell me that she would put me back in her will if only I would divorce my spouse, for instance. My mom has never had to plea bargain her way out of several theft and fraud charges to avoid jail time. My mom wasn’t physically abusive, or otherwise like the parents in any of the horror stories you will find if you delve into the backgrounds of children at Child Haven.
And she’s quite cool. She’s the person who introduced me to both science fiction and comic books as a child. Just this last week we had a long geek-out session together via text message because X-men: First Class is currently her favorite movie. Mom was my writing buddy for November’s NaNoWriMo. My mom encouraged my interest in science most of the times that people in the fundamentalist churches we attended warned her that my interest in such things as paleontology, relativity, and the like were inspired by the devil. More often than not during my childhood mom erred on the side of being inclusive, tolerant, and accepting of people who were different than us.
Do I wish that she were happy for Michael and I when we were finally able to legally marry? Yeah. While I’m glad that she seems to genuinely like Michael, that she’s welcomed him into her house, and that she refers to him as her other son, I wish she could come around to seeing our relationship as not sinful. But it could be a lot worse. It has been a lot worse. Sometimes you have to be thankful for what progress you get.
When I started this post, I had intended to publish it last Sunday. But I read enough interesting exchanges on various social media between some people who’s relationship with Mother’s Day is more complicated than the typical Hallmark commercial, and I felt like a bit of an interloper or even impostor for even drafting this.
It’s as if I don’t quite feel I have the right to talk about what issues I and my mom do have. Particularly since I’m hardly the ideal Hallmark son, myself.
We muddle along fairly well, in no small part due to her firm belief that part of loving a person is being in their corner, even when you don’t agree.
Mrs Friendly was the neighbor who so very patiently worked with Mr Drunk when he was facing eviction to find a new place to live. Mrs Friendly was also the person who, when Mr Drunk’s relatives were moving him out and their truck drove over one of my flower beds, swept up the smashed decorative light before coming to knock on our door and tell us what happened. Mrs Friendly is the person who, more than a year since Michael and I got married, and a year-and-a-half since voters approved marriage equality in our state, gets teary-eyed when she tells me how very happy she is that we were able to get legally married.
So we were very sad a few weeks ago, while carrying cardboard out to the recycle, when Mrs. Friendly asked if she could have the boxes. Because they were moving out and needed to pack everything up by the end of the month.
Michael and I were miserable sick last week—right at the time that Mr and Mrs Friendly were doing their big move out. I was feeling a little guilty that we didn’t help with the physical move. Though I also figured that keeping our germs to ourselves was probably best. And the one time I actually saw moving going on they had a bunch of people helping. That’s the other thing, so far as I can tell, they did the bulk of their loading of stuff into a truck while I was away at work.
The thing I’ve been grumpy about is the left overs. Such as the pile in the picture at the beginning of this post. Those things were piled up in front of the mailbox on our building (remember, these neighbors don’t live in our building, they live in the building next door) when I got home from work one night. And since over on their building there were piles and piles of furniture and boxes, but no signs of any people at all, I presumed that they had left with a truck full of things and were unloading at the other location. Because our mailbox set is near the shared driveway, I figured those were just things that wouldn’t fit on the truck, and they meant to get them on the next trip.
The pile hasn’t moved for over a week.
There’s a bunch of other things (more ceramic planters with plants in them, a weird shaped metal chair, lots of cardboard boxes) still piled up over on the walkway in front of their apartment. I have since seen one of the owners of that building carrying cleaning supplies into the place. I hope that Mr and Mrs Friendly had a conversation with their landlord about the random left behind items over there.
I realize that the stuff left over by our place could be things that our landlady or one of our neighbors in our building agreed to take care of, and they just haven’t been moved. I can certainly imagine the conversation.
Mrs Friendly: “I have no idea where I’m going to put that in the new place!”
Neighbor1: “I thinks it’s beautiful!”
Mrs Friendly: “Do you want it?”
Neighor1: *looks toward her boyfriend who is in the middle of helping Mr Friendly lift heavy piece of furniture into truck* “What do you think? This could go in the corner of the living room.”
Boyfriend: *finishes pushing piece of furniture into truck* “Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess we could do that…”
And slowly a pile accumulates. By the end of the day, everyone’s too tired to deal with it.
I haven’t actually run into anybody to ask.
And I’m kind of glad, because I’m afraid my annoyance will come through and I’ll sound like an old, unhelpful grouch.
On the other hand, feeling grouchy about that motivated me the other night to trim back my roses. Since spring began, they’ve shot a bunch of branches into the porch and walkway. Some branches were getting out into the driveway. If it was annoying me to have to dodge the branches with big thorns, they must be driving some neighbors well past annoyance.
I completely filled up the yard waste bin with branches chopped from my two roses. Now no one has to dodge them, and I will feel less like I’m hurling stones from inside a glass house if I see a neighbor and ask about the pile of things.
Update: Of course, when I come home from work at the end of the day that this posts, the pile is gone.
So let’s see how I’m doing: Continue reading I set these goals for the year, see
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