Day 109

Fog! 55 degrees! Great weather. Three days of 80’s is too much. Megan brought me dinner from Rebecca’s at the farmers’ market. She is devastated by the impending death of her friend. Watching a friend disappear is one of the most difficult parts of friendship. There is not much comfort that I can give her. It’s our job to stay close to our friends, listen to them, love them until the end. Today is housework, dog food, gopher stakes, and tea and stories group.

What my mind wants and has wanted for a while is writing. I keep saying “later” and then I don’t write. I need my discipline and am not taking care of my body or my mind with distractions and procrastination . I don’t want to acknowledge that time is not  renewable. It’s like the house maintenance;  I keep saying that if I wait long enough it will be someone else’s job. Ever since I read Mary Oliver’s line “It’s time to stop looking and start seeing.” I know that my digging and delving must continue. Old pieces of history keep showing up and I need to see the thread that connects my life experiences that have brought me to this minute. Just a couple of evenings ago, I turned on PBS hoping for a concert and there was a documentary on the 1964 flood. And the memories flooded in, The dismal days of cleaning mud, sadness for everything lost including my first marriage as that was the end of any hope I still had for it. All the parts that weren’t working were magnified by the stress. The relationship limped on for two more years but there was nothing left.

The music for this mood would be a dirge by bagpipes and that image brings up yet another moment in my history when I saw a bagpipe band emerge out of the fog while at summer school in Santa Cruz..

There was “joy” to be found in the disaster in the form of gallows humor. I’m picturing our cleaning in Van and Marianne’s flooded house. It was on a knoll and we arrived in a boat. The water had been half way of the walls in the down stairs. As we pulled open the drowned drawers in the kitchen, someone pulled out packages and put the items in a bucket and the papers in the fireplace. It was set on fire and caused a chimney fire. The fire department couldn’t get there and Van said “Why didn’t that happen before we cleaned up?” We all laughed  hysterically and nearly fell down out of exhaustion and deep sorrow.