Monday Musings

After a rather long, non productive weekend, I was hoping Monday would find me feeling more energetic, more ready to roll up my shirt sleeves and take on the world. No such luck.

I've been curiously lethargic of late, a feeling I can usually trace to a lack of scheduled activity or responsibility.  I realize I need the impetus of deadlines and appointments to keep my metabolism going, and without them I sink into this torpor of inactivity.  I was moping around the house yesterday, needing to do something and not feeling like doing anything.

"Can't you just relax?" my husband (the master of relaxation) asked me. "After all, you worked every day last week, you deserve some time to just chill out."

"I don't do relaxing very well," I admitted.  "It makes me kind of mad."

Jim just shook his head sorrowfully.  "I'm doomed," he said under his breath, returning to his spot in front of the television.

I do feel mad at myself when I'm not being productive...not writing, not practicing, not exercising, not cleaning or cooking or caring for some elderly relative, not playing with the dogs, or brushing them or walking them, not doing something.

Yet while my mind spins furiously with all these things I should do and should want to do, my body feels awfully stubborn about remaining perched in one spot, complaining with increased aches and stiffness about gardneing or biking, invoking extra effort to read with eyes that can no longer bring fine print into focus.  

Today started out brightly enough  - I did walk the dogs, make some phone calls, settle in to write (right on schedule!)  Yet now that the morning is coming to an end, the prospect of a long afternoon stretches before me and I'm feeling a bit directionless.

As we head toward preparations for back to school, I realize this is the first time in over 10 years that I have no musical "calendar" for the coming year.  Scaling back on my musical group participation was deliberate, a way to give myself more flexibility and time to concentrate on other activities.  But now I feel pressure to use that time productively, and I'm not quite sure how to do that, or if I'm up to the task.  And I'll admit there's a certain sadness that comes with the loss of that venue of self expression.  There's also a void in my social life at the moment, since the majority of my friendships revolve around musical activities. 

All told, I suppose it's no surprise that I'm a bit like a lost lamb these days.

Wish me luck as I work my way back to the flock.

Friday At Last

An odd week, really, and I'm glad to see Friday at last.  A week of some changes around the homestead - the new landscaping is in, all squeaky clean, neat and fresh, these hopeful little trees and shrubs settling into their new home.  If they're anything like their predecessors, they'll be there for a long, long time.  This house seems to retain life for a long while, doesn't it?  My in-laws built it back in 1952, Jim has spent his whole, entire life here, and I've now lived here longer than I've ever lived anywhere else.  I have some photographs (do any of you remember those square black and white snapshots with the scalloped edges, circa 1950?) of the original shrubbery, looking just as tiny and vulnerable as these new plantings do today.  I wonder - who will be here 50 years from now to see how they turn out?

Another big change in the neighborhood - the dirt road my mom's house faces is being paved at last!  Finally, after 35 years of mud and dust and rutted snow - a nice, smooth blacktop surface.  Her road is part of the last section of a major paving project in the township that will end with all unpaved surfaces being paved.  This is such a welcome  improvement that for once, I won't begrudge paying my tax bill in September (well, maybe just a little.)

I've been watching a lot of television this week.  In addition to Dan In Real Life, I also watched How To Make An American Quilt (don't know how I missed this one, but it's a keeper!) and The Nanny Diaries (very poignant and sweet).  Both were adaptations from novels I had read, and both were very well done, I might venture to say I enjoyed them more than their respective books.

Also happening this week was a visit to a new doctor, prompted by menopausal "issues."  I was very impressed with her approach and her manner.  She was warm, intelligent, non-alarmist, yet responsive to my concerns.  She treated me with dignity and took time to explain and listen.  The office staff was equally helpful and professional.  They arranged for additional tests quickly, and the doctor contacted me personally to go over all the results.  All in all, it restored a bit of my somewhat tarnished faith in the medical profession.

End result - there's no need for immediate concern, although we're keeping a watchful eye on the situation.  I feel much better.

Then, earlier tonight, our church newsletter arrived with the news that our beloved pastor has announced his retirement.  It won't be until October of 2009, but the long process of goodbye has begun.  He has been with our congregation for 20 years, and literally brought the church back from the brink of ruin and built a thriving congregation.  Not only will he be missed, but it will be so very hard to replace him.  It's a bit scary, because the wrong minister can absolutely devastate a church in very short time - I've seen it happen, and it's not a pretty picture.

So, a rather disparate set of circumstance in my domestic life this week.  You all know I like to tie things together into some neat and tidy little revelation, but I'm not seeing any connections here.  I guess you'll have to be content with a simple summary of my life in general for the third week in July 2008.

How about you?  What's been happening in your life this week?

Alone Again

This title is misleading, because I'm really not alone all that much anymore.  There was a time in my married life when Jim traveled quite a bit, and then,  when he didn't, I did.  But for the past four or five years, neither one of us travels much without the other.

However...

Due to a complicated set of circumstances (an unexpectedly very cheap airline ticket for him, and a long standing work committment for me) he's in Florida for the week and I'm here.

Alone.

Except for the pups - which is not a small thing, really, since they are great company.

So let's be honest - sometimes being single sounds attractive, doesn't it?  No one snoring, no one hogging the bathroom or the wide screen TV, no one setting their alarm clock for some ungodly hour allowing it to wake you up before they turn it off and go back to sleep, no one asking "when's dinner?" and then making a phone call when you get it ready...

No one.

I'm a little bit surprised how lonely I feel.  It could be that there's just a bit of jealousy involved - after all, he gets to spend time with the children, and I don't. 

But mostly, it's feeling as if part of me is missing, as if I'm forgetting something very important in everything I do, as if one vital piece of the puzzle that is my life has been lost behind the refrigerator or (hideous thought!) thrown in the trash.

So I've been a bit aimless today, wandering a bit, moping a bit.  I cleaned house, walked the dogs, ate a salad for dinner and then drank a tad more than my alloted one glass of wine. 

I also watched a movie (on the wide screen TV!) that was simply adorable - Dan In Real Life.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.  Soon. You won't be sorry. 

I finished the novel I was reading - The Wednesday Sisters.  (I recommend that as well.)

And here I sit, writing this as a way of postponing crawling into my big king sized bed all alone (except for Magic and Molly, who, as I've said, are quite good company.  Molly even snores pretty well.)

When you've been with someone for 35 years, it's easy to become a bit complacent in your relationship.  You kid around about it sometimes, make jokes about being together so long.  It's kind of nice to know that you still miss each other when you're apart.  Sort of like that song in Fiddler on the Roof.  You know the one...Do You Love Me? Tevye asks his wife.  Do I love you? she replies sarcastically, and then proceeds to serenade him with a litany of things that prove her love for him. Twenty five years of cooking, washing, keeping house, sharing a bed...if that's not love, what is?

And then they finish the song in close harmony...

"It doesn't mean a thing, but even so...after twenty five years...it's nice to know."

That it is.

Hello Again

Amazing.  An entire week has gone by without a word from me on this page. What have I been doing with myself? 

Kind of you to ask.

I've just returned from a weekend jaunt to Columbus, Ohio, to attend the wedding one of my former students.  When I started working with high school students in 1993, I never imagined that my involvement in their lives would one day extend to attending events like their weddings. (And funerals, too, but that's another story.)

But it has.

Laura was one of those girls who had it all together in high school, and now, 11 years post graduation, she hasn't changed one bit.  Her wedding was picture perfect, every last detail (right down to the hand packed goodie bags waiting at the hotel for her guests) was perfectly orchestrated.  She even managed to keep threatened rain showers at bay long enough for all the guests to get to the reception...and than have the rain end just at 11 p.m. when the festivities began to wind down.

I love weddings, with their bright shiny hope and promise, their tradition and ceremony.  This one was a nice balance of style and taste, without being ostentatious or overdone.  It was a bit subdued by modern standards, and my friend and I were discussing this on the way home. 

"Well," I remarked to Pat (who has been separated from her husband for almost 20 years), "it doesn't take a million dollar wedding to make a million dollar marriage."

"That's for sure," she agreed.

I'm sure we were both thinking about the young man who had ridden with us to the wedding, a classmate of Laura's (in fact, her first love) who just three weeks ago had signed divorce papers.  Pat and I attended his wedding too, back in 2004.  We watched he and his lovely bride exchange vows under a gazebo in the warm glow of a Florida sunset, enjoyed seeing them dancing the night away, gleeful and full of hope. In fact, that wedding was the last time  we saw Jeff, another of their classmates, a brilliant man who took his life in January of 2006.

Young people, none of them yet 30 years of age, and they've already experienced some of life's most tumultuous moments - marriage, divorce, death - it doesn't get more elemental than that.

It makes me thankful for the relatively slow trajectory I've traveled on life's pathway. For the past three decades, I've lived in the same home with the same man, where we raised a healthy child who now has a successful life of his own.

And given all the uncertainty in this world, that's worth about a million dollars to me.

A Loss For Words

I'm curiously at a loss for words this week, which is ironic given the theme of my latest project.  And perhaps I should save this post for Write On Wednesday, especially given the way I'm feeling right now, which is virtually inspiration-less. But I'm sitting here at my dining room table, the window pushed open full tilt, the backyard grass dappled with shadows from the red maple tree, the one I'll never cut down no matter how dangerously close to the house it grows, and I hear the cicadas for the first time this summer.  I usually connect them with really hot weather, that murderous, relentless heat which sometimes comes late in July and August, the kind of weather that always surprises Michiganders, offends us I think, since we're used to the general temperance of this state's climate in summer.  But they're out there singing already, or whatever it is cicadas do, that incessant buzz which crescendos to a fever pitch before it stops, suddently, as if someone has clamped a lid on it. 

 I sit, and stare, chin propped on my hand, and let the sound of cicadas wash over me.  I watch a butterfly flit merrily to and fro in the tall grass of the orchard, and notice a friend join him as they swoop easily among the weeds.  My eyes are drawn upward, past the stand of pines whose tips are completely invisible, nearly tall enough to poke the fat bellies of those cumulus clouds stalled overhead, and out beyond the first fence toward the poplar tree, whose branches ripple like waves in the azure sky.  Their soughing reaches the house, a gentle shush of sound, whose wake sets my wind chimes in motion, their alto notes a gentle a-minor chord progression, a monkish call to worship from some early age.

I am calmed, and soothed, and eased.

So, who needs words?