Dreams, the Holidays and Photo Albums

Since my shoulder surgery two weeks ago I’m sleeping better. I’m only waking up once or twice during the nights instead of seven or eight times like before the procedure. That’s a good thing for my all-over health but I don’t remember my dreams as easily as I did when I wasn’t reaching a deep sleep in between waking up so many times. This morning, though, I woke up with a dream hanging on and its one I wish I couldn’t remember.

In the dream Don was breaking up with me. He was going off to have fun with his new friends---a less than angelica looking bunch of ragtags, I must add. I guess you could say he broke up with me when he died but I didn’t need to hear the words to start out my day or to feel his tender last kiss still lingering on my lips. I don’t get guy logic! Why kiss someone like that if you’re going to say goodbye in the next breathe---or was it my own logic since it was my dream? “Adios, aloha, ciao, arrivedece, goodbye Jean, it’s been nice knowing you.” Nice knowing me? Nice! Get out your dictionary, buddy, and find a better word. (Did you know that Stephen King says if you have to use a thesaurus to replace a word, you shouldn’t be using that replacement word in the first place? Easy for him to say. He has a bigger vocabulary than I do.)

“Kiss off, Don!” I replied in my dream, “I don’t need you to tell me what I already know. You’re going away and you’re not coming back.” I was as mad as a soapy, wet cat in a bathtub and I stayed that way for an hour after I woke up…almost two if I need to be honest with myself.

No matter how well we widows have dealt with the death of our spouses, no matter how much we have moved forward in our new lives the holidays still bring with them a certain level of melancholy and apprehension, don’t they. The fact that Don died early in January doesn’t help. That timing just extends a long season of being alone while the rest of the world seems to be celebrating, and memories of past holidays interrupt my journey forward. I have no plans for Thanksgiving, did I mention that? Although I did turn down two offers. I didn’t feel like pretending I fit in with the first family that invited me. They are a large, close-knit family and I don’t know many of them well enough to call them by name. With the second offer I got, it would be too hard with my arm in a sling to help with clean up and the would-be hostess is in no condition to be cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner which she would have done if I had accepted her kind invitation. She loves to cook, but she shouldn’t be on her feet that much. She’s ten years my senior and has been known to pass out when she overdoes.

Someone suggested I could get the Salvation Army to deliver a Thanksgiving meal to me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. 1) I give money to the Salvation Army to buy holiday meals for the poor. 2) I can very well afford to order a fully cooked holiday dinner from an upscale deli that you just warm up the next day. And 3), Thanksgiving---or any of the holidays---isn’t just about the food. It’s about the people you share it with. I’d say “bah humbug” here but I think that word is strictly reserved for December. I’d look it up to be sure but I feel the presence of Stephen King looking over my shoulder and he is one scary guy. Why do they print books of common phrases and dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms if we’re not supposed to use them? Answer me that, Stephen! Ohmygod, is this what senility feels like, you start talking to people who are dancing around in your head?

My niece and her husband came to town this week to take me out to dinner and to bring me some photos to scan for a book I’m working on. It’s a photo essay covering the life spans of my parents and I will give a copy to my brother, my nephew and my two nieces for Christmas. But mostly I wanted my all-time favorite photos of my folks all in one book that can travel with me to the assisted living place I hope I never have to move to, but I’m a realist so I’m covering my bases. I have eight boxes of photos, sixteen large photo albums and a huge box of slides and no one is going to let me keep them all if I’m forced to move one day. My Plan B is to spend the winter making 8” x 8“ topic essay books like the one I did for my brother’s birthday last year. After I finish the book of my parents, I’ll do one of Don and me, one of my nephew and nieces, one of the family cottage and all its reincarnations and one book of my favorite things. Then I will make it well known that if anyone tries to send me off to assisted-living without my six, compact photo essay books, I’ll disinherit them assuming I’ll be able to dial a phone and can remember who my lawyer is. Who says getting old isn’t a blood sport. You have to be strong to become as weak and helpless as a kitten if you age badly. In the meantime, I’m going to start eating spinach for breakfast. It worked for Popeye, why not me?  ©

Birthdays, Photo Albums and Old People Nonsense

I like to get up in the morning and start writing before my brain wakes up. That’s when I do my best pondering of insignificant things like why does the dog always take his favorite plush toy outside on his first trip of the day. Does Levi think his duck needs airing out? Does he think the duck will eat his breakfast kibble while he's gone? And why doesn’t the dog ever take the duck outside later on in the day? Mornings are turning me into a one trick pony. I ask a lot of questions but try as I might the answers rarely follow. I think Levi is germaphobic, though, because he never takes the duck down into the barked-over area where he pees and poops. He drops him off on the top step before he goes down to do his duty and then Levi collects the duck again when he comes inside.

All my life I’ve had a problem multitasking. My husband used to tease me with the nickname of ‘one track’ because I get so wrapped up with whatever I do that all else could fall off the face of the earth and I’d never notice. I always considered it to be an asset rather than a liability but I can see where someday it’s going to get me in trouble. Someday, for example, I’m going to have to explain to a social worker why I’m still sitting in my nightgown at 2:00 in the afternoon because some noisy neighbor got concerned seeing me not dressed so late in the day. "Ms. Social Worker, I got lost writing the next great American novel and here’s the proof.” Then I’ll proudly hold up one pristine page of nonsensical writing to show for my morning’s work.

I’m so sick of chasing magenta dust bunnies around the house that I’ve taken to wearing my chenille bathrobe inside out hoping that will contain the little fuzz balls from jumping ship. I’ve washed that robe a zillion times and it still creates those pretty colored dust bunnies. I even find them on my keyboard! I just know this act of wearing my robe inside out is going to be used against me in a sanity hearing one day. “Yes, sir, Mr. Judge. My aunt can’t even dress herself without getting her garments on wrong side out.” The older I get the more I want to write notes about why I do this or that and leave them all over house. If I put a note in the pocket of my inside-out-bathrobe do you think it would save me from getting shipped off to assisted living some day? How many calls from social services is one too many before your family gives up and says, “Take her, she’s all yours!”

Recently I found out that my older brother is throwing himself a big 75th birthday party. The years go by so fast, don’t they. One minute you’re in the prime of your life, then the next minute you’re looking back and wondering where it all went. I thought my half century birthday was monumental but approaching three quarters of a century is on a completely different scale. It’s very weird, indeed, to think of my brother (and me not many years behind him) as being as old as two of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World---the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Nearly seventy-five years’ worth of memories, life experiences, book learning, laughter and tears is a lot of data to keep sorted in one tiny little brain. No wonder that data processing gets misdirected from time to time.

I’ve been working on a book to give to my brother at his birthday party. It's titled, The Boy Behind the Man and it’s mostly sepia tone photos that highlight his first 18 years. I also put in some poems he wrote and a few quotes that help describe his childhood. I can’t wait until the book comes back from the printers. Due to a divorce and moving I don’t think he has a lot of photos from his childhood and I know he hasn’t seen the ones my mom gave me a very long time ago. It was a fun project. Next winter when my social calendar dries up due to bad weather like it did this winter I’m going to make more topic specific photo books. I even made a notation in my day planner so I don’t forget.

Well, I’ve got to take a shower. The sun is shining and the roads are good so I’m going off to a Red Hat Society tea. We really should call it a coffee, though, because most of us stop at a near-by Starbucks before going to the community room for the meet-up. We’ll be planning an outing to see a dinosaur exhibit later this month. ©

Note: The photo above is of my brother and me.