Future Plans and Past History

When the senior hall newsletter comes out we have a week before members can make reservations for events taking place over the next two months and if you’re a non-member you have to wait two weeks. At 9:00 AM precisely on the date that RSVPs are accepted you can email or call yours in, not a minute earlier. It’s a new system for taking RSVPs and I hate it. With over 1,500 members most reservations fill up quickly and with the old system I never had a problem because I’d sit right down the minute that newsletter came and take care of business. Of course, those who lived farther from the post offices claimed they’d get their newsletter later than their friends so the new system is supposed to level the playing field. Boo-hoo for me, I think it does.

Monday I set my alarm for RSVP day and I managed to get mine in and time-stamped for nine o’clock and ten seconds. Later in the afternoon I got an email that all eleven of my RSVPs were confirmed. Yeah! If I don’t get snowed in, I can look forward a tour and lunch at brewery, tours of a Buddhist temple and the “First African Episcopal Church” (part of a How We Worship series) plus four luncheons, four lectures (on lake shore dunes, Nazi prisons, local history and great reads) and a fancy-mancy, five course lunch and tour at the culinary arts school downtown. You should see the list of things I didn’t sign up for. The place could keep me busy every day of the week, if I wanted.

Yesterday I was sorting some stuff that came out of the closet in my newly created art studio/guest room. All the boxes were placed in there over a decade ago and never looked at again. Under it all is my sewing table and machine which I’d like to maybe use again. I had our builder put a plug and light in the closet so it could be a used as a sewing or computer center. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to do an archaeological dig in there. Mostly, I’m finding what I expected to find: sewing and teddy bear making supplies that I need to organize and downsize. But I also found a box labeled: Personal Writing to Sort. I should have opened that box last instead of first.

I sat in the living room for the better part of a day and night reading just three things from the box. 1) A journal my brother and I kept to pass notes back and forth about my dad in the last six weeks of his life---we were taking turns seeing him every day---and when I finished reading the journal I was no closer to throwing it away than I was a decade ago when I put it in the box; and 2) A journal I kept as an assignment for a college class I took the year I turned forty called Woman in Transition. We had to make observations about what went on in class and our reactions to homework assignments, then each week we handed the journal in for the professor to read and write notes in the margins. I loved that class. It made an important imprint on my life, giving me the confidence I needed to go back and get my degree. When I finished reading the class journal, I was no closer to throwing it away than I was a decade ago when I put it in the box. The third thing that I read from my past was a manuscript of a novel I wrote twenty-two years ago. Oh, my God, it actually didn’t suck and it had some (intentionally funny) dialogue that made me laugh out loud. When I finished reading it, I was no closer to throwing it away than I was a decade ago when I put it in the box. Can you see a pattern here?

I have another box of diaries and journals in the closet, written between ages ten to thirty (see the photos at the top and bottom). The plan was to read them and pull out the passages I want to keep then destroy those old books. But after my marathon day of reading my other writings I’m a leery and weary thinking about how much time this diary project will take. What are my alternatives? Destroy the old diaries unread or keep them intact until I die when they’d probably end up in a tag sale? I’ve certainly seen enough old journals and letters at estate sales to know that could happen. On one hand, I wouldn't care because anyone who buys and/or reads old diaries probably enjoys separating the wheat from the chaff. But it’s my wheat and my chaff and who better than me could tell which is which? On the other hand, my ghost would be embarrassed if all that could be found is chaff. ©

 "An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff then prints the chaff."

Adlai E. Stevenson

Diet Shakes and Clothing Optional

I have struggled with controlling my weight my entire adult life and then some.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have three sizes of clothing hanging in the closet. (Remember the bowls in Goldilocks and the Three Bears?) One size is always just right while the other two batches of clothing hang there either taunting me or making me feel proud. If I didn’t see my doctor for biannual check-ups I’d probably have four or five sets of clothing and I’d have to grow a wart of a closet off the side of house, advertising to any passerby that a fatty-fatty two-by-four lives within. I’m not quite that bad about holding on to clothes I can’t wear, but it always amuses me how I can put on an outfit from Lot C (the big ones) when I should have grabbed something from Lot A and people will tell me I look like I’ve lost weight. I don’t like clothing that is skin tight, they give me hives. Literally. I’m one of those people who has to be careful about laundry soaps, fabrics and elastics that go next to my skin. If something even starts to tingle when I put it on, off it comes and I move up the line of porridge bowls trying to find the one that’s just right.

I used to know a couple who ran a nudist ranch in the nice weather months and while the idea of going without clothing would have some practical applications for me, I’d take one look at that fully dressed, robust figured couple and I couldn’t for one minute picture them or me walking around in public with all the assets hanging out there. I don’t mind looking at pudgy, naked people in a live figure drawing class and I’ve have done it many times, but seeing body parts and "muffin tops" all in motion on volleyball court would probably scar my sensibilities beyond repair.

I could, however, spend my in-the house time happily clad in a bathrobe. That was great when I was younger and I did it whenever I could but now that I’m elderly---and know too much about how the system works---I need to stop that before it gets me in trouble. It’s one of the signs Social Services marks down as an indication that an older person is losing it and can’t be trusted to live alone anymore. “Does your father get dressed every morning?” “Does he take a shower every day?” Those tricky social workers have even been known to poll the neighbors for “signs” of senility. I’m screwed! If I have nowhere to go I can usually be found happily typing in my robe until noon, I need a sign printed up that reads: I’m not senile! I’m a would-be writer and this robe is my work uniform. Do you think that would fool a social services worker checking out a report if a neighbor called in, worried that he spied me hugging my chenille bathrobe to my body as I’d wait at the door for the dog to come from the cold? And---gasp---it was after noon!

Yesterday I walked into a place my niece-in-law was telling me about. She’s lost 30 pounds drinking a supplement shake mix this place sells along with hosting a weekly support group. Oh, boy! For a mere $3.00 a week I can get a nutritious shake to drink while engaging in conversations about food and get the opportunity to buy goodies to fill up my blender so I, too, can make delicious shakes. For years I’ve been having a Slim-Fast shake for a meal replacement on a daily basis so this isn’t much of life style change for me. EXCEPT I feel the same way about using my blender as I do all the other appliances in the kitchen. I’ve tried, truly I’ve tried liking the activities that go on in that room. I’ve taken cooking lessons and I really do enjoy watching the Food Network but I just can’t work up a lasting interest in spending so much time making things that disappear so quickly afterward. When I plate up a meal that looks especially nice I want to grab a can of shellac and preserve like it's a piece of art.

Anyway, this nutrition wellness place has no long term commitment to sign and the niece-in-law that I’ll be attending meetings with and I go way back when it comes to trying to keep our weight in check---Weight Watchers, diet clubs, walking clubs and now this. My trusty, mostly unused blender will be heard twice a day until I find an excuse to revert back to my default, food grazing habits. The goal: Get rid of the Lot C of clothing from the closet. Actually take them out this time, bury them in a back yard vault and have the door welded shut.  As much as I know you should give away clothing when you lose weight, I can’t bear the thought of doing it. The fear of being a bag lady someday and not be able to buy big again, if needed, is deeply entrenched. I blame my depression era parents for that mindset, then came along my husband (whose own parents had the same mindset) to reinforce the notion that poverty can come knocking at any time. Doctor, doctor do you have a pill for irrational fears like that? And don’t even get me started on my rational fear of living in clothing washed in strong detergents and bleaches at a nursing home. I will die scratching myself to death and no one will know why this old lady keeps taking off her clothes and roaming the halls naked. ©

Purging the Closet Part Two

I’ve met some wonder people in the last few days at Widowed Village. It’s a support website for widows and widowers that rivals any of the stroke support sites I used to hang around in the early years after Don’s stroke. They have a busy chat room, a message board, blogs and they sponsor widow camps you can go to on both coasts. One is even being planned to Big Bear. And they have subgroups to join. I joined one for widows who’d been caregivers, another one for people born in the 1940s, and one for widowed in 2012. They have it all, especially in terms of friendly people willing to be a sounding board when you need it.

From reading there, I get the idea that purging the closet of Don’s clothing was quite an unusual accomplishment this close to his passing. That may be, but two things helped me in that endeavor. One: I have the quilt of his favorite old t-shirts that was made for him several years ago and I had the pleasure of seeing him cover up with it nearly every day since. If I didn’t have that quilt I don’t think the closet purging would have happened quite so soon. I’d take breaks from working in the closet, look at that quilt and say to the dog, “That’s Don. Not this other stuff.” Don helped pick out the logo shirts and patches in that quilt and I kidded him about wearing all of his favorite shirts all at one time. So let that be a lesson to anyone who's been putting off having a t-shirt quilt made. “Getter’ done!” to quote Larry the Cable Guy. You’ll never be sorry.

The second thing that helped me purge the closet is that I’m a coward. Yes, I am. I like getting the hardest thing done first so I don’t have to face the dread building up and up of doing something hard in the future. Why start at the bottom of a hill and push up when you can start at the top of the hill and push down? That’s my life philosophy. Or so I tell myself. But that’s just me and I know that we all have to follow the beat of our own heart and pick the time that feels right for each of us---be it in two days or two years. Grief cuts its own path across the field of life.©

Don's quilt (below) was made here.

Purging the Closet, Big Strong Me

Several people have told me that getting rid of clothing was the hardest thing they had to do after their spouse’s passing. One woman, a few years out from her husband’s death, still has his underwear in their dresser’s top drawer and a relative said he still can’t bear to give his wife’s wedding dress away and he’s far enough out to have started dating again. Big strong me---famous last words---I decided that I’d tackle this job first so I won’t become an old lady who ten years from now is still hoarding a closet full of her died husband’s logo t-shirts and a drawer full of his holey---not Holy---socks.

Seven trash bags full of clothing later, tears dried on my cheeks and with an achy jaw from clinching too hard, I emerged from the closet knowing that someone should start a damn closet purging service for recently widowed people. Some solemn faced soul who knows enough not to read the family laundry with comments like: I see your husband liked to go to car shows. That’s where I got in trouble---reliving every purchase like in Don’s case the American Pickers logo t-shirt he insisted he couldn’t live with out. Well, damn it! He got the shirt and then he didn’t have the courtesy of living long enough to wear it out. How fair is that? Had I known that would happen I would have stamped my foot in my best impression of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind and pitched a royal fit until he backed down from wanting to buy something that is now so painful to donate to Goodwill.

The closet exploration is only about 80% completed. I didn’t make it to the summit, didn’t get to plant my very first widowhood flag. Nope, no gold star can be stamped on my membership card to the club. Will I finish that last 20%? Or years from now will I still have squirreled away in the closet a stash of jersey knit shirts advertising fun places to visit? “Oh, well,” as my friend Scarlet would say, "I'll think about it tomorrow, after all tomorrow is another day." ©