Deja Vu All Over Again

I had barely settled in here at the Florida house...been grocery shopping, been to the library to get a couple of books, got the car uncovered and filled up with gas.   We enjoyed a simple dinner at home, watching some of the things recorded on our TiVo.  I had cleaned up the kitchen, taken a quick walk around the neighborhood (hello favorite pond, and snowy egrets) and had just poured a glass of Chardonnay in expectation of last night's new episode of Glee. Then the phone rang.

"I hate like hell to tell you this," my mother said when I answered.  "But Aunt L.'s in the hospital."  This is my recently widowed aunt, the left behind member of the couple who were like second parents to me. 

"Dear God, what now?" I asked.

"She was in terrible pain in her abdomen all day, and nauseous," my mother continued,  " so her friend took her into emergency.  They're doing an MRI to see what's going on.

At 11:00, I fell exhausted into bed.  We had been up since 4:30 a.m., and my eyes wouldn't stay open any longer.  This morning, at 7:30, the phone rings again.

"It's not good," my mother tells me.  "They found numerous masses, and think they could be cancerous."  My aunt's history of colon cancer four years ago certainly makes this a likely conclusion.

I immediately start searching for a flight home, and am lucky enough to get the last seat on a Northwest flight leaving at 1:00 pm.  So within the next 30 minutes, my dear husband will be driving me to the airport. 

There is definitely a surreal quality to this...exactly three months ago yesterday, on another Wednesday evening, my uncle fell and fractured his hip.  There followed five days of waiting, wondering, worrying...and by Monday of the following week, he was gone. 

"I'm ready to go be with Tex," she said to me this morning when I talked to her.  "You know I'm ready to see the Lord."

Indeed, she's been  telling me that a lot in the last three months.  And I wonder if there does come a time when you feel ready to relinquish the hold on life the rest of us clutch so frantically.  If most everyone you love is gone, if your life no longer resembles any of the hopes or dreams you had for it, if your faith in the hereafter is so strong that Heaven beckons like a soft bed after a long hard day.  

This morning the doctors say that these masses may not be cancer...that for sure her gall bladder is leaking, her pancreas is inflamed.  More tests are in order, they tell us.  Endoscopy, CT scans.  Surgery, perhaps tomorrow.

So, here I go home.

And here we go again.

Working Together for Good

Life in general has been interesting this week, as the saga of our "new" lives continue to unfold - as Jim settles into this thing we're calling Self Employment; as we start to take a closer look at our finances and see how/if this new arrangement will work; as we learn to take on different roles within the structure of daily living.    This week a series of events occurred which tends to reinforce my faith in the cosmic order of the universe, making me think that perhaps someone is keeping an eye on this sparrow after all. One of my colleagues, our office manager actually, has been going through a really difficult time in her personal life.  I've felt a bit beleaguered by fate, but my situation  pales in comparison to the things she's been through this summer.   It wasn't a huge surprise that she took a rather sudden leave of absence from her job. 

However, her loss leaves a large hole in the day-to-day operations of our company.  Her position includes everything from answering phones to ordering supplies, filing to fixing coffee, processing mail to making bank deposits.  I'm sure you can see what's coming next...yes, I've been offered the position with a rather nice increase in salary. 

Technically, I'll be sharing the position with another co-worker who quite coincidentally just returned to our company after working full-time for one of the large insurance agencies in the area.  She decided (much to my delight) that she preferred the small, close knit atmosphere of our office, along with the more flexible hours and less pressured work life.  The two of us have been job sharing our current position for several years, and have a fabulous working relationship.  We literally complete each other's sentences, and are tit for tat on so many levels...she prefers coming in early and I'd rather stay late.  She likes to take time off in the summer, and I prefer my vacation time in winter. 

We complement each other extremely well.

We even worry about the same things.  Like change - we both get anxious about it, and we both admit to being a wee bit trepidatious about the way this will work.  She's worried about feeling overly pressured at work, the feeling that caused her to run screaming from her last position.  I'm worried about giving up the flexibility that I've come to count on.  We both worry about fulfilling all the requirements of this position on top of the responsibilities of our original jobs, which we will retain as well.

I'm also wondering what it's going to be like, working 30 hours a week.  I'm spoiled, I know, but I've never worked that many hours at a "steady" job.   Am I going to get bored?  Will I have enough of that all important time to pursue the things I'm passionate about, the activities that feed my soul?

But for the past couple of months  I've been wondering about ways to increase my income, going so far as thinking about applying for another part-time job, or actively seeking more jobs as an accompanist.  And here, dropped into my lap, comes an opportunity for additional work in a setting where I'm already comfortable and familiar. 

What could be more serendipitous than that?

However it plays out,  the opportunity itself has given me cause for hope.  It's almost like a sign that there are positive processes working in the universe for me.  I've had a difficult time believing that lately.  One of my favorite verses in the Bible has always been this one from Romans..." and all things work together for good for those that love the Lord."

All things working together for good...could that be happening in my life right now?

I hope so.

And I hope it's happening in yours.

Remember When

When I woke up this morning, I was sure I had something to say today...certain there was a post in here somewhere.  But the day was filled with things like a big grocery shop, and stripping beds, washing windows and clearing away dust bunnies. You see, my son is coming home for a visit tomorrow, so there was lots to do.

Now it's dark, and I'm curled in the armchair underneath the window in his room.  It smells wonderfully fresh and clean in here, the combination of  bed linens dried in the late summer sun and the Murphy's Oil Soap we used on the baseboards and mini-blinds.  I've cleared off the desk top, stowed away the various bookstacks (which grow even faster than the boy who used to inhabit this space once did), made some room in the closet.

He only comes home about once a year now, and so I'm thinking about the things that change in that length of time.   And because I tend to be just a tiny bit melancholy, my thoughts turn to loss.  Last fall when he was home, we had just lost my mother in law.  This year, my uncle is gone. 

Our lifestyles have changed too, for Dad no longer has a job to occupy his time, is home all day everyday, and has started doing things like laundry and shopping and taking the dogs for their walk.   And now Mom goes to work everyday, and stumbles in the door at 6:00, frazzled and tired from dealing with the demands of the world, in need of a place to put up her feet and sit quietly for a while.

So,  my son steps back into this life that was once his, even as it recedes farther and farther from him with each passing year.  I wonder if it's not so much like coming home anymore, but more like taking a trip down memory lane.  For our conversations now often begin with "Remember when?" rather than "Guess what's new?"   He's been gone from here 11 years this month.  Before long, he will cross that invisible line that marks more of his life lived away from home than the meager 18 years he spent here in it.

In the past few years, I have become filled with a deep and abiding love for this life, right here.  Perhaps because I'm starting to see it slip away...as people and places disappear in equal  measure with the gray hairs appearing on my head.  I want to grab hold of all that this house means to me - all the days that were so perfect and I didn't even know it.  I want to reach back and hang on to them for dear life, not let them get away this time.

But I can't. 

So I hope to be more conscientious about the moments to come, to cherish each and every one, no matter how small and ordinary it might seem.  For those moments are the stuff of real life, and it's real life that is so very precious.

Perhaps that's what I wanted to say all along.

How about you?  What are you remembering right now? What moments are you cherishing?

Ain't 'a That Good News

"I'm gonna lay down this world, gonna shoulder up my cross, gonna take it home to my Jesus, ain't a that good news..."  Ain't A That Good News, a spiritual, arranged by William Dawson There ain't much good news in the world these days, is there?  Sometimes it seems as if the news media is intent upon showering us with every conceivable piece of bad news they can find.  I wish the nation's journalists would use the power of the press to encourage hope and seek positive solutions for some of the current problems, rather than continue their fear mongering and doom-saying.

One of my all time favorite quotes about writing comes from Ingrid Bengis - "Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change."    There is no doubt in my mind about the truth of this statement.  The power of the word - written or spoken - can be used to make or break the hearts and will of a people.  In the past, I have accused the media of shaping our political opinions with their words, and while I think they have the power to do that, I believe this year their power was usurped by Barack Obama's own eloquence, and it was his own words which influenced one of the greatest political changes this nation has ever seen.

In spite of my faith in this statement, I find it all to easy to sink into pessimism about my own writing.   What's the point? I sometimes find myself thinking.   Who cares what I have to say?  Why bother struggling to find just the right word, to come up with the perfect idea, to create a evocative image?  What difference can it possibly make to the world?  I also find my writing slipping into the "woe is me" category, becoming a litany of complaints and worries that would rival the lineup on my local talk radio station.

It's in those times that my words - if they come at all - become mired in pessimism and negativity.  When I lose sight of the reason I write - to clarify my  thoughts and emotions by expressing them in words in ways that are meaningful to myself and others - I can no longer write effectively or influence any kind of positive change in myself or in anyone else.

So I hope to focus on the positive in my writing this week, to speak truth but to seek it from an angle of hope and light.

How about you?  How do you find positive things to write about in these troubled times?  Do you think the written word has the power to effect positive change?

Stewing

My friend C.and I were chatting on Facebook the other evening, and she literally had me ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing, for those of you uninitiated in chat-speak as I was until C. educated me).  C.  has a knack for rather sarcastic humor - her self-imposed nickname is Little Miss Snarky, and it fits sometimes.  Occasionally she apologizes for this trait, and I'm quick to assure her that I don't mind a little snarkiness.  Actually, sometimes C. says out loud the very things I'm thinking, but am too Little Miss Goody Good to say. Last night our chat turned a bit more serious after C. apologized (again!) for what she feared had turned into a gripefest.  "After all," she typed, "I was stewed in a very negative pot."

Of course, I knew exactly what she was referring to.  After all, I live with a man who was stewed in one of the most perniciously negative pots I've ever encountered.  If a kind word was ever spoken in this house during my husband's formative years,  he certainly doesn't recall hearing it.  When I repeated  C.'s description of her upbringing to Jim, he sniffed disdainfully. 

"Well, if  her pot was any more negative than mine, I'd like to see it," he said.  "On second thought, I probably would not want to see it," he amended hastily.  "Can you imagine any two people being more negative than my parents? Can you, really?"

Anyway, I thought her phrase was particularly apt, and it got me thinking about the whole "stewing" process, the atmosphere we create in our homes.  It  becomes the broth we cook in, and whether it's sweet and savory or bitter and lean, it flavors our personalities for life.   My husband (and my friend C.) were steeped in brine, and sometimes I marvel that they've managed to dispel that bitterness from their personalities as successfully as they have.  Jim has never been anything but loving, kind, supportive, and patient with me and with our son.  Not long after meeting his parents, I asked him outright how he came to be so different.  How did those two fractious people produce a young man who was gentle and sweet?

"I made up my mind a long time ago that I wouldn't be like them,"  he said, this young man all of 20 years old who had obviously been thinking about this for quite a few years.  "I really have to work at it sometimes, too."

He's been working pretty hard at it these days, as he looks for jobs and tries to figure out a new path in life.  I can see that determination coming into play, as he gets up each morning, goes to his computer and starts sending emails, making follow up phone calls, doing research on jobs, organizing his new desk.   One of  the traits he inherited from his parents does occasionally come in handy - their stubborn streak was legendary, and it's that same dogged determination (put to a more positive use) that helps him get through the kind of crisis we're in right now.

Now I was cooked in a very thick broth, the kind where the ingredients are smothered in gravy and slow cooked until they're so tender they fall off the bone.  Lots of love- perhaps too much, if there is such a thing - lots of attention paid to making sure life was sweet and easy for me.   So sometimes in a crisis, I start to feel smothered, and then panic as I struggle to get out as fast as possible. 

The two of use were definitely stewed in very different kinds of pots.  I think we've combined the flavors pretty well over the years.  Right now, our lives are a bit like a new recipe that's left simmering on the stove.  We're just waiting for it to be done cooking, but not really sure what it's going to taste like.

I hope it's good.

How about you?  What kind of pot were you stewed in?  And how has it affected your life today?