Ants and Ancient Things

I’ve been invaded by tiny ants, or rather I should say the dog’s feeding area has been invaded. (Although in the process of killing them I found one crawling on my elbow!) It’s the second time this summer they’ve done that and I’m running out of new locations to put Levi’s food and water. This time I had to throw out the contents of his self-feeder---about three pounds of kibble. Hint: when your dog doesn’t want to eat, put your glasses on and look for ants. I don’t have any indoors ant spray because I’m guessing it’s not safe for Levi, so I used Lysol All Purpose Spray which I’m sure is just as toxic to dogs as ant spray but at least your floors get cleaner in the process of mass murdering the devil ants. Why is it that I still feel bad about killing a firefly last week but I have no sympathy for the ant carcass I just smeared all over the floor with the bottom of my shoe? He was a little scout, I presume, looking for his dead buddies that died by Lysol to drag them back to their nest to mourn or feed to his queen. Good luck with that, I wiped at least a hundred of them up with wet paper towels. I’ve seen ants carry off their dead but I made up the part about feeding them to their queen. But it sounds logical to me. It’s a cruel, hard world out there.

I’m struggling to write about something that doesn’t include the 'D' word in it. If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know which 'D' word I’m talking about. If not, I’ll give you a hint: It involves moving to a smaller home. I’ve only been at it for a month and I’ve come to the conclusion that this time around it feels different, more joyful. And I’ve further concluded that the joy is coming from a place where I have an exciting goal I’m working towards and not a painful experience driving me forward. I’ve only done the 'D' work twice in my life. Once after my husband’s stroke and once after he died. The first done under extremely stressful conditions, the second under a veil of sadness, tears falling like rain drops from Eeyore's cloud. Both times I was saying goodbye not only to things but to our whole way of life and saying hello to an unknown and murky future. However, I’m doing the 'D' work now because I will be moving on to life style that will come with very few responsibilities and I’ll be able to do my favorite things without the guilt of thinking I should be doing something else. I intend to be that quirky woman in the complex who paints and writes and knits and does the most complicated jigsaw puzzles on the planet---yes, the two-side puzzles, same picture on both side only slightly different view. My favorite one being a photograph of a pile of yellow No. 2 pencils.

I still haven’t decided if I’m going to take any quilting supplies with me but I’ve been thinking I should make one more quilt before I die. I don’t do them by machine so a box of ‘quarters’---quilters will know what those are---won’t take up much room. That box of fabric and a few quilters’ rulers, maybe some books of patterns and oh crap! I’ll need scissors and needles and thread, of my! How much hobby stuff can one fit in an eight foot long closet in my future den/hobby room and still have room for out-of-season coats? 

After my three day marathon of working in the garage and making great progress I took Saturday off to go to Goodwill, recycling and the grocery store and to stop by the pet store for more kibble. As fortunate would have it, I had a $15 rewards coupon so the dog food was nearly free which just goes to prove there is balance in the universe…the ants taketh away, the coupon giveth back. 

But before my afternoon trip to run the above errands I literally spent the morning trying to identify the above object and when Google images can’t ID something, you know you’ve got something rare. I once had a magazine article written about that very object but do you think I can remember what it said or where I put it or even if I kept it? Heck no! It’s a primitive lock---the tail/key comes out---but knowing for sure if it’s Roman or whatever can make the difference between e-Baying it for pocket change or hundreds. I’d donate it to a museum but I’d have to research museums to know which one exhibits that sort of thing which brings me right back to having to ID than dang thing first. It occurs to me that I really do have a lot of obscure information in my head; is it any wonder some of it falls out from time to time? With my last downsizing I donated a large oil and grease chart for a 1905 Reo Motor Car that I matted and framed like it was fine art for one of my husband’s birthdays and the car museum was happy to get it. It’s hanging in their research library where people who are restoring antique cars come to play. Sometimes giving something away feels great.

My house cleaner is coming today and I’ll go to my last book club tomorrow followed by a lunch date on Saturday with a very old friend, so I can almost promise, positively (well maybe) that the 'D' word won’t come up in my next post or two. But be forewarned, my husband didn’t nickname me "One Track Jean" for nothing. ©

Cemeteries and Guru Ants

Over the weekend I did something that should have been done around Memorial Day. I packed a bucket up with garden gloves, a spade, scrub brush, plastic bags and a gallon of water and headed off to the cemetery to tend to my husband’s grave marker. If the sod around the stone isn’t edged once a year, it wouldn’t take long for the entire stone to be covered over with dirt and grass. Location, location, location---like buying a house, when you pick out a gravesite location matters. Don’t buy one in a low spot. Of course, we didn’t think of that when my husband and I picked out our site. It’s in the same row as plots our friends bought and that pleased our funny bones to be neighbors when we die. Don is there waiting all by himself. Well, not exactly. He grew up near the small town where his ashes are interred and he delivered newspapers to most of the houses, back in the days when newspapers were the kings in the media world. He knew a lot of the people buried in the cemetery. He also trimmed trees and cut the grass in the grave yard for an entire summer of restitution for a juvenile crime. Hint: Don’t move city-owned picnic tables into the river. Yup, the guys in our row at the cemetery will have much to talk about when they reunite.

It was a pleasant day, sunny but not too hot and I got the edging done without taxing myself. Last year I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep up the stone’s maintenance but this year I realized my recent strength training at the gym made the chore not only manageable but almost meditative. I was so in the zone of what I was doing that when I walked back to the car I was surprised to see another woman was working less than 50 feet away. I’ll have to go back another day to affix a Snoopy trinket to the corner of the stone. It was too wet to do it while I was there. But I don’t know why I keep that tradition going because by fall some little kid will have peeled the trinket off the stone. I use Crocs shoe charms and if you hear about an old woman mugging a little kid to get the Snoopy charm off his shoe it will be me, taking back was as taken from the cemetery. 

I picked Saturday to go to the cemetery because there was an art show going on in the community pavilion in town and I wanted to know if any of the artists knew of someone who teaches painting. At the sponsoring group’s table they took my email address and I was told one of their members does hold classes. (Fingers crossed.) After checking out all the artist’s work I walked across the street to a hot dog place that overlooks the town’s damn and garden park. With my lunch packed to go, I went out their back door and ten steps later I was connected to the nature trail. I found a bench in the shade about a block away where I could watch the swans and kayakers go by. The trail was busy---bikers of all descriptions, skateboarders, joggers, dog walkers, fly fishermen, and people pushing wheelchairs. I’d done my share of pushing a wheelchair and walking the dog on that trail but a bad tick season made me stop doing the latter and Don’s death, of course, ended the former. It wasn’t a sad day of memories although earlier when I turned into the cemetery I was swallowing hard the way you do when you think tears might spill. That brief moment made me wondered if that was the reason why I’d put off doing my spring chore until mid-summer. But it wasn’t. I just got too busy.

As I sat by the river a slight breeze carried the sweet scents of summer and I glanced down to the cement pad my bench was sitting on and I got side-tracked watching a black ant carrying off a shredded pickle longer than he was. It had fallen off my hot dog. A piece of shredded cheese was near-by. I picked it up and put it down in the path of another black ant but he just walked over it and before I knew it I was engrossed in the curious dietary preferences of ants. Pickles and bun bits, yes. Cheese and onion, no. I thought about giving them a few drops of my Coke but I’m pretty sure that would have been akin to yelling “THE KEG'S HERE!” in a college frat house. Without planning it, without consciously commanding myself to relax and live in the moment, to mediate myself to a place of peace, it happened anyway. I was both in and of world, a god to ants in the same way some higher power might be putting ‘pickles’ and ‘cheese’ in my path to see how I’ll react. They say the benefits of Mindfulness (living in the moment) are: It reduces brain clutter, brings better force in your life, lowers stress, helps you better understand your pain and connects you with the world around you. I get that. I got that tenfold on Saturday. After spending over three hours between the cemetery, the art show, lunch and playing mindfulness games with my guru ants, I went home and took a long, dead-to-the-world nap. ©

“In today’s rush, we all think too much — seek too much — want too much — and forget about the joy of just being.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Visiting the Cemetery

I was in my husband’s home town a lot this past week so I popped into the cemetery to---to do whatever it is we widows do while visiting a gravesite. I still haven’t figured out why we go. It’s not like Don is there, buried six feet under. Part of his ashes are but his ashes are all over the place: on the shores of Lake Michigan, in the winds over a ghost town he loved, along a nature trail, in our back yard, in a river that runs through town, in a locket, and in a four inch high, boxed urn tucked in a bookcase. I was a regular Johnny Appleseed when it came to spreading his ashes. I had to make myself stop coming up with places where I thought his ghost would like to roam. And I’m still surprised I didn’t find a way to ship some of his ashes out west to the mountains in Colorado, his favorite place on earth. I was on a mission that spring after he died. I told myself it was a mission to please him but I suspect I was just making sure I had places to visit Don that didn’t involve going to a gated community full of dead people. But you've got to admit, Don is now part of the Classic Elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire and there is something poetic and eternal about that.

The cemetery is a pretty one full of trees and hills and they don’t restrict the height of the stones like so many places do. Don picked out the plot himself, based on the fact that his life-long friend and his wife bought the lots next door. Party time when we all join him there, I guess. That thought tickled Don’s sense of humor. This week, I did not expect to see the stone with our names on it so overgrown! Vegetation covered up half the surface since I’d been there earlier this year. It made me sad, mad and embarrassed that I hadn’t check on it sooner. I didn’t have any tools with me but I pulled out what I could, unearthing a nest of angry ants in the process. I tried but couldn’t ignore the ‘yuck factor’ the ants brought to the experience. Ants will take over the world….or so I’ve heard and now I have proof.

I stopped by my sister-in-laws house while I was out and about and we got on the topic of burial verse cremation. She wants to be buried and I said, “I don’t care what they do so long as they make sure I’m really dead first.” But I am getting cremated and my box of ashes will reside down with Don’s and the ants. Yuck, yuck, yuck! Have I mentioned YUCK! I don’t like ants. She doesn’t want her kids to spend a penny more on her funeral than she spent on her husband’s funeral and I said, “Considering how long ago he died and how much longer you can live you’re going to get buried in a cardboard box! Prices go up.” She laughed as I knew she would. My sister-in-law has been a presence in my life longer than my husband was at this point in time. How strange the math gets after someone dies. I’m now older than my husband was. He’s like one of those butterflies that got trapped in amber for all eternity. My memories of him are fossilized and grow yellow with age, perfectly preserved with no chance of growing in numbers. Maybe that’s why we widows go to cemeteries? We need to polish the amber from time to time, to see where we’ve been to know where we’re going. We give an accounting at the gravestone, ticking off on our fingers our widowhood accomplished. Hey, Don are you listening? Am I doing okay? Are you doing okay? What do you think about the classes I took? As I said these things in my head, I felt like Little Orphan Annie searching for her lost past and future all rolled into one. If only that were possible for widows like it is for orphans searching for their birth parents.

The trees at the cemetery are entering their show-off mode. Some people love the fall color palette---the yellows, browns, oranges and golds---but it’s my least favorite. It signals change and effects my moods in a negative way, says the woman who wouldn’t eat orange foods until I was over forty. Years ago I took a class on Color Psychology where I learned it wasn’t just in my head, there are physiological reactions to colors which explains why they don’t use orange in the psycho wards. Interior designers know this. People who create commercials know this but what does all this color talk have to do with a widow going to a cemetery? Not much. I just got sidetracked thinking about how much easier it is to visit in the spring when the promise of renewal is palatable in the air we breathe, when the crabgrass hasn’t claimed the stones and the ants are still hibernating underground. Out of sight, out of mind.

I didn’t cry while I was at the cemetery but I chocked up as I drove through the gates to go home. I could feel the tears behind my eyes begging to spill out. But I told them, “NO!” I am woman! I am strong and I will forge a new life for myself even if I die trying. ©