When the Past Becomes Part of the Present

I spent two afternoons this weekend cleaning, purging and organizing my garage and I ended up with two boxes of stuff to take to Goodwill, a large bag and cardboard to take to recycling and other stuff to throw out. It doesn’t sound like much but I was proud of myself. It was messy out there in the land of e-Bay shipping and empty boxes. One of those boxes I took to Goodwill contained 20-25 books about the Vietnam War and, yes, I’d read every one of them back in days when I was trying to understand what our soldiers went through over there. Things happened in that phase of my life that to this day I have never talked or written about, but I am at peace with letting those secrets stay buried. Letting go of that box was an acknowledgement that old and deep wounds have finally healed. However, it wasn’t lost on me that while I was ceremonially letting go of another piece of my past, Mr. Trump was tweeting: “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.” The Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief doesn’t have a clue about why and for how long women keep secrets about ‘he said/she said’ situations---even when (and maybe especially because) they thought their lives were in danger. 

Another box that I sorted and mostly threw out were photographs that were my husband’s---of his friends before we met and from GM, of his collections and heavy equipment and a mishmash of landscapes. He took a lot of photos and I only kept five-six including one of his favorite childhood cow (above). I hate the fact that photographs can’t go in paper recycling bins, so I ended up filling a 13 gallon kitchen trash bag up so they didn’t have to get mixed in with the nasty stuff that ends up in the garbage collection truck. Ya, I know I’m fooling myself because that bag of photos probably got busted before the truck got to the end of the block. If I had a fireplace, I would have burned them and found out afterward that there’s some kind of toxic fumes released by doing so. Oops. And did you know, you can’t put shredded paper in with your paper recycling? The pieces are too small for their machines to process. And while I’m sharing what I learned recently, you can’t put photo slides, CDs or floppy disks in recycling bins either unless they are specially designated bins for video equipment. 

Something else I kept from that box of photos, what I still can’t get rid of, was my husband’s report cards from kindergarten through high school. Silly, I know, but the envelope doesn’t take up much room and I find the teacher remarks both sweet and funny because they show that Don’s core personality hadn’t changed since he was a little boy until he died. “Don is friendly boy.” Don has good manners.” “Don talks too much in class.” “Don is bright.” “Don constantly needs to be reminded to remove his hat when he comes inside.” Can you imagine a teacher today making a notation on a report card that as parents you need to work on getting your son to take his hat off when he’s inside buildings? I still haven’t been able to get rid of Don’s favorite hat, either, his Stetson cowboy hat that he wore out West and whenever he was totally happy with his world. Does a widow’s work ever end? Not for overly sentimental types like me. If I had been a Native American Indian in the Old West I would have had a heavy pouch full of pebbles, feathers, hair and other reminders of people or places that I didn’t want to forget. I don’t travel ‘light’ through life. 

I’ve got one more afternoon to spend in the garage before I’ll be satisfied with leaving it behind for the winter. I’ve got cabinets that I want to sort and downsize. One is full of yard and garden stuff, another is full of floral vases and seasonal decorations, another is full of kitchen appliances, etc, and one cabinet contains stuff I've identified as things to sell on e-Bay. I dread sorting the vases most of all. I love flowers. They were a part of my working years for twenty years. Love having the perfect vase for all sorts of flowers from wild violets to sunflowers, from a single flower to a bouquet of several dozen stems. None of the vases have monetary value. So I can’t sell them on e-Bay to soften the loss. But of the 50-60 vases in the cabinet, I’m hoping to pare them down to eight or ten. Wish me luck.

Sometimes the past becomes part of the present like it did this weekend when our ‘esteemed’ president couldn’t resist voicing his nonsense about women keeping secrets. Apparently, if we don’t run our mouths shortly after whatever we claim took place happened, then it doesn’t count. I know my reaction to Mr. Trump's obtuseness was not unusual, though, judging by how many women tweeted their stories with the hashtag “why I didn’t report.” Life is messy. People are complicated. Our president is an ass who ruined my weekend. ©

Redecorating Guy-Style

Sunday I was asked to go to my widowed brother’s house out in the boondocks to give some feedback and suggestions on a redecorating project he’s planning for his living room, dining area and kitchen. That sounds straight forward enough, doesn’t it, but I wasn’t sure how much arm twisting his lady friend did to get him to agree to bring me deeper into the mix than I already was. I was worried about tip-toeing around some conflicting ideas I knew they had. But I’m nothing if not my dad’s daughter, so I put on my diplomat’s hat and went out fully intent on finding out what look he’s going for and to do my best to get him where he wants to go without having a shootout at the O.K. Corral. I have an art degree. I know color and balance. I love them both so what could go wrong with a plan like that?

My brother’s first purchase for his new project was a huge, red chair. Okay. Granted most women would not start there, but he did and a good sister works with that without asking, “What were you thinking?” Besides, I knew he’d already gotten that question from his friend. The chair did give me an idea for a signed and numbered print that belonged to my husband. It has touches of red in it and I knew the other colors would look great with his brick fireplace. The print also has major guy appeal because it depicts an old general store with gas pumps out front. My brother loved it. Great! Prints are always a good place to start for color-scheme challenged people. Did I mention he also has a large, white leather couch to figure into the equation? A few weeks ago, when I heard about the red chair and the fact that he wanted an area rug to lighten up his dark wood flooring, I sent him a link to a rug online and he ordered a sample and it was there on Sunday, too. It worked perfect to pull all the fixed elements in his living room together and more importantly, my brother likes it. We kicked around a lot of ideas and we settled on paint colors and other small-but-important tweaks. I was happy. He was happy and his lady friend was happy. No one took a bullet or got their feelings or pride hurt. 

I volunteered to go back out after the painting is done to revamp the stuff on my brother’s wall of built-in shelves---it's all out of scale now---and to redo a collage of photos he keeps behind a large V-shaped window that had been salvaged out of our family cottage and was turned into a shadow box. His lady friend had lobbying to get rid of it (and the shelves) but I knew she’d have more luck finding an albino elephant to serve us afternoon tea. Instead, I suggested color changes that will de-emphasize the window's presence. Displaying and arranging photos and shelf decor is where I shine and my brother seemed pleased that I offered to tackle those jobs. We walked around his house, basement and poll building searching for treasures to put on the shelves and we settled on a few toys from his youth plus an edited version of the framed photographs he’s got scattered all over the place. I’ve never seen so many family photographs and snapshots in one house! They’re EVERYWHERE! And now that he has five great-grand babies all under two, his snapshots are spawning like white caps and brown gills at a mushroom farm. Thankfully, my brother is open to me helping him make some sense out of them. Maybe even relieved. He says people keep giving him pictures and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings so he puts them where they can be seen. He’s my dad’s child, too.

I gave my brother a mission---should he choose to accept it---to find some thing large, rectangle, metal and old to up-cycle into a photo collection display point for a wall in his dining area. My tame-the-photos plan is to put vintage photos in the shadow box, his kids' formal and family portraits on the shelves with the antique toys, and the great-grand-babies' and other in-flowing snapshots on the new photo display board. What he needs the most, though, to contain the photo clutter is permission to rotate pictures to photo albums or boxes when his photo display point gets too full. The key to keeping any collection from turning into a hoard is to designate a certain amount of "artful" space to it and when the space is full you either stop collecting or you upgrade what you’ve got by using the take-one-out-before-putting-one-in rule.

My brother’s lady friend lives closer to me than to my brother so we rode back and forth to his house together. On the way home I remarked that it had gone a lot easier than I thought it would and she said she couldn’t believe how agreeable he was to everything I suggested. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he was just feeling out-numbered and was doing the “Yes, Dear Dance” and when he comes back from the paint store he’ll have a can of purple instead of Alpaca Blanket and Weathered White. Stay tuned for part two of Redecorating Guy-Style. I’m sure there’ll be one. ©

Copycat Blogging Day

My heart be still! I finally got out of the house after being cooped up for what seemed like the entire month of December. Yesterday I went to the sculpture park and saw the display of Christmas trees decorated in the customs of 42 countries. It was a little anti-climactic seeing so much Christmas after the holidays, but an outing is an outing so I jumped at the chance. Why should a date on a calendar take away from their beauty? For some reason it did---probably because the crowds of happy people weren’t there, full of promise and holiday cheer which can be as infectious as the flu. But my niece-in-law and I could walk right up to the trees, read about the customs and play touchy-feely with the delicate decorations and that was nice. The tree that represented the U.S.A. could have been pulled right out of the 1950’s living room; it had many ornaments that I remember from the trees we had growing up. They also had a tree that presented the Native American Indian Nation plus holiday displays from non-Christian nations. Monday they take the trees down. If you dread the job of disassembling your home tree imagine the daunting task it would be to pack up 42 trees, most of which are over twenty-five feet tall!

I didn’t make a lists of resolutions this year but I do have a new goal for this blog. I want to take more photographs and share them here. With that in mind, the photo at the top is of a baby car seat blanket that I made while I was snow and ice bound last month. It’s for my great-great nephew coming into the world in April. My blog goal was inspired by a fellow widow blogger I’ve been following this year---Hi Judy!---coupled by the fact that I have a new cell phone that takes great pictures. I also recently came across another blogger who spent last year photo-documenting 365 days of gratitude. What a great idea and she’s got a book out of all her photos and the notes she wrote about the subjects she documented. I admire that she was able to stick to a project like that for an entire year. When I attempt stuff like that I usually peter out by summer. So I’m not committing to anything that intense. I’ll be happy if I can throw in some original photos from time to time.

Another widow blogger I follow is planning to cut expenses as part of her new year’s resolutions---Hi AW!---and she is tracking what she spends for a few weeks to see what she can cut and live without. Already, she’s stopped three magazine subscriptions which actually gives her an excuse to go the library to fill in the gaps. I thought of her today when I got back from the grocery store where I got sticker shock when the cashier said I racked up $185.18 for my quick trip to stock up for the coming snowstorm. Here’s what I found I could have lived without:

- $29.90 spent on yarn when I have other yarn in the house lined up for a scarf and hat project.

- $14.99 for a bird feeder when I have four in the garage I’m not using. I’m a sucker for new feeders that look easier to clean.

- $17.88 for a bag of bird feed. What have those crazy little birds ever done to earn their keep? They are eating me out of house and home!

- $3.88 for a box of Christmas cards marked down 75%. This is clearly incentive to live another year if I need to justify the expense.

- $3.99 for a pot of daffodils. Spring flowers in the winter is another one of my 'can't resist' items.

- $13.98 for D batteries for my emergency lamps. A lot of money but with a ten year shelf life I should be good until I’m not allowed to live unsupervised anymore.

- $5.98 for two scented candles. Who cares if the house smells like fresh baked cookies without the work of making them? I'm not having an open house to sell the place any time soon.

- $4.99 for two Sterno fuel cans for my fondue pot. Okay, I admit this was really, really stupid. If the power goes out I’m going to need more than just a way to heat up soup. What can I say, I’m old and I worry too much. But on the other hand, having two cans of Sterno in my 'Hopeless Chest' would make me a rich bag lady should my financial life fall apart and I end up on the streets.

- $3.29 for a white nail tip pencil. I'm not be vain about many things but I am vain about my fingernails. They are the most perfectly shaped part on my entire body. If I ever had to learn to live out of a shopping cart under a bridge, my Sally Hansen pencil would be the last primping luxury to go. And if I need even more justification for why I will always want a white pencil in my life, I could leave notes on the pavement should I aspire to be blogging bag lady.

That’s a total of $99.88 of unnecessary spending I could have cut in just one trip to the grocery store. If this widow ever needs to start cutting corners to save money, I can chop them off with an axe and not really miss those corners. Of the $85.30 remaining in actual grocery items I could have done without some of that stuff as well, like paying $6.55 for two boxes of gourmet tomato and bacon bisque when I already had three cans of soup in my pantry. Yes, you guessed it. I am truly a child of depression era parents who thinks a pantry is too scary, empty if there is a unused square inch of space. Empty space means I'm not prepared for those hard times just around the corner...or so that was the message that was drummed into me and my husband when we grew up.

Well, that’s the end of my copy-cat blogging for today. Have you copied or been tempted to copy something from another blogger, a magazine article or a friend? Fess up. ©

Maybe........

MAYBE it’s because I spent seven years of my life visiting a nursing home twice a week that I’m not looking forward to going again. Or MAYBE it’s because it’s not unusual for people my age to be living in a nursing home and I’m scared they’re going to lock the doors and not let me leave. Whatever the source of my apprehensions, it felt weird being in a group of women ages 55 to 80 as we sat around a table stuffing assorted Halloween candy, spiders and gummy worms into bags for the residents of a nursing home. But that’s what we did at our Red Hat Society business meeting. Fifty of them---bags, not ladies. Apparently, we’re going trick-or-treating in reverse. We’ll be delivering candy room-to-room instead of getting it by going door-to-door. Worry wart that I am I can visualize half the recipients of the bags ending up in ER. I know I would have a heart attack if I opened a bag and found two big black spiders mating inside. And the person I visited twice a week, my mother-in-law, would have eaten the plastic arthropods. How smart is it to include non-eatable things in candy bags going to people who have been known to pick lint off the floor and pop it in their mouths? But I’m a newbie in the group so I kept my worry wart thoughts to myself.

Also at the meeting the “Princess in Charge of Veteran Affairs” reminded us all to start accumulating stuff to put in shoe boxes for homeless vets that our chapter will be packing in November and giving out at Christmas. Jeez, I hope we don’t have to deliver those boxes in person---although it would be “character building” if we did. (That’s what my brother used to tell me and his kids whenever we didn’t want to do something.) Ya, ya. I know. I’m a liberal and liberals believe in helping people who are down on their luck. Save your heckling for someone else. I’m good at writing checks and sending them periodically to the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter in town. In years gone by I was even good at talking to the homeless when Don was at my side because I knew he could handle any threatening situation that might come up. But a swarm of old ladies dressed in purple and red climbing under bridges and viaducts looking for refrigerator box condo communities? How’s that going to work out? My new Red Hat chapter, I suspect, is going to be taking me out of my comfort zone a lot. MAYBE peer pressure will finally catch up to me after all these years of avoiding it.

My social calendar this week also included a lecture at the Historical Society. The lecture was about an old amusement park that used to be in town in between the 1890s to 1954. It was Disneyland huge and it drew in a string of well-known entertainers at the dance pavilion, playhouse and vaudeville theater---one venue alone could seat 1,700 people. The park also had a roller coaster, Ferris wheel, four story toboggan run/roller coaster and a roller rink where I skated more than a few times. The park sat in between two lakes and you could rent canoes that came with picnic baskets so you could lunch on the water. Like people who have reached their expiration dates, it’s hard to believe an amusement park so big and popular could disappear as if it never existed except for the pictures left behind in a book.

MAYBE it was the romanticism of a by-gone era or the pure talent of a cameraman to tell a story, but I went home from the lecture longing for something I can’t have. I want more candid photos of Don and me together! We took photos of each other, of the dogs, of scenery and flowers but any photos of us together were usually taken at someone’s wedding and they were formal, line-ups and stiff. “You stand over there by the bride.” “Line up by height.” “Say cheese.” I want the kind of photos where we were having a quiet or romantic moment while hundreds of people were having the time of their lives in the distance background. I want pictures of myself and Don lounging in a canoe or feeding swans along the shore on a sunny summer afternoon. Iconic photographs of an iconic era like those at the slideshow/lecture. The current generation with their cell phone cameras sure won’t have to long wistfully for more photos when they get old. Judging by what they post on Facebook young people pretty much document every moment of their days. Do they think if it isn’t captured in a photo it didn’t happen? If so, I’m beginning to wonder if they might be right. Am I just imagining the smiles that passed between Don and me so long ago? Did he really hold my hand when I needed his support? Was he real? Were we real? MAYBE I’m not so sure anymore and it hasn’t even been two years yet since he passed away. What’s it going to be like in ten?

Time marches on. The pines outside my window are thinning their needles. The cattails are losing their color. The season is changing and Halloween is just around the corner. MAYBE if I can remember not to eat any plastic spiders when I visit the nursing home with my Red Hat chapter they won’t want to keep me locked inside. MAYBE, like the main character in Water for Elephants, I'll find a way to escape the nursing home and run away to join the circus if that does happens. ©