The holidays are a time rich with traditions. When these traditions start to feel like chores, I think it is time to rethink their purpose. One Christmas tradition that Husband and I have and continue to love is strolling through the Desert Botanical Gardens all dotted with luminaries.
Within even the most prickly of situations…
Cody was five and Carter three when I started this blog. Now Husband and I find ourselves living with two man children, ages 17 and 15.
The memories they have of my dad are smudges, more stories retold than remembered. Their memories of Husband’s dad, are more recent but less numerous. Both their grandfathers had Alzheimer’s. And both boys know that. They may not remember what was robbed from us, but they know the impact, the pain, this disease has caused our family.
They are close to my mom. They have fond memories of family trips, shared experiences, and precious one on one time with her. She recently moved down to Arizona to be closer to us and perhaps the move should have happened sooner.
But here we are, with a diagnosis for almost a week and I haven’t told them. How do I tell them? How to I get across that the moment is most important even if the moment may quickly be forgotten? That we are building memories and she is loving being in the moment.
How do I talk through what may or may not happen? How do I help them through this pain? How do I keep them from withdrawing or even being scared or nervous around her?
How?
Today is the day my mom received a diagnosis for Alzheimer’s.
I am letting myself process. I am too numb to be eloquent or soft about it.
I have not blogged in almost two years, but this does not mean that I have not thought about it or about you. Not that I expect any of you to be here, it has been a stretch. From time to time I have looked for various accounts that I had such lovely connections with. Some are still here, but most are not, gone off as I have to other things. Some of you I still read via email, but you don’t know that I do. I’m a ghost around these parts for a multitude of reasons.
I will put no expectations upon myself here.
I simply wanted to make a note of this and see where, if anywhere, this may take me.❤️
Don’t let the cat out of the!…oh, nevermind.
My typical is the silly and uplifting snippets from life: quirky things my kids say, the cute antics of our fuzzy orange cat James, hikes and meals enjoyed by family and friends. It is the lemonade from the lemons of life. But I have lost my cup of sugar and my water supply is depleting rapidly, leaving me with lemons I struggle to dilute and make tolerable to the taste.
From me, when you see my name pop up in your digital noise, you expect lemonade with a sprig of mint, picturesque and thirst quenching on a lovely summer day. It is what I expect from myself when I am inspired to write.
And that is it. I have been unable to see those moments, unable to make anything that would be recognizable as lemonade, so I have stopped writing.
But now, maybe I need to write about the lemons. So here is one:
Standing in my classroom just yesterday, a classroom which should have 29 students, but several are out due to exposure or being positive or they have simply not shown up. We are all masked and they are busy learning about Martin Luther King Jr. – watching parts of his I Have a Dream speech, reflecting on what they might dream about and how they can make a difference, when I get a text with the results of my COVID test. It is negative so I sent a flippant text to Husband – “Ha! I am negative! Take that world! Did you get the other results?” Only Cody’s has come in and his is negative too. Trying to make light of it all, I text back that now half of our family can go out and party this weekend.
A student raises their hand and as I walk over to address their question, Husband sends a one word text – Crap
Carter has come back positive. I manage through the last twenty minutes before I can get my students to lunch and then have lunch myself. I am very glad for my transition lenses which darken in the sun and for my mask, masking more than it is designed to – my raw terror, my fear, my fight or flight instincts. These are the same feelings that caused me to drop everything and collect Cody from school on the day of Sandy Hook.
I cry in the bathroom.
It is not that he is positive, his fever has gone away and his cough is receding, but I worry about his emotional state because I know that mine is in shambles.
I am angry. I am angry at the virus. I am angry at the selfish, disrespectful, self-entitled masses that give more weight to their individual wants instead of providing support and kindness to humanity so we can uproot this invasive virus that has sprouted and consumed the garden of our lives.
I am sad. I am sad that children are being robbed of years of their childhood, the innate innocence and youthful bliss of simply being a child.
I am tired. I am tired of all of this. I want to peel away the oppressive and unsettling weight pressing down upon me, roll back time and start over. But I can’t. I can’t and that makes me feel trapped and in turn claustrophobic in my own life.
And now it is like that phenomena where, say, you decide to buy a car, a Subaru. From that point forward you start to see them everywhere. You can’t not see them. Despite my efforts I am getting to the point where I can only see the bad, the negative, the dark. And I don’t even watch the news.
So, at five o’clock this morning all of this was rolling around in my head. My COVID positive thirteen year old son sleeping in his room across the hall. Tears sprang to my eyes and I turned my wrist to see what time it was, gadging if it was late enough to get up and make some coffee.
My watch did not show me the time, or rather, maybe it did. On the screen was the low power notification.
Exactly. Exactly perfect. Low power feels about right.
(And a note so no one judges my texting during teaching, having our phones on us, as teachers, has now become an expectation. Things move so fast, being untethered from communication is a thing of the past.)
Cutting through an alley in Flagstaff on our way to an art festival yesterday, we walked past the above door. Carter says “Look momma, a cat!”
“Ahhh,” I replied, already missing our cats even though we just left the house this morning.
“Momma! Don’t ‘ahhh’ vandalism!” The horror in Carter’s voice dripping off each word.
In my defense, he was the one that pointed it out.
I don’t know what is for dinner tonight, but what I do know is that in about 23 minutes my first batch of mini pumpkin muffins will be coming out of the oven.
Priorities, people.
What prompted this, you may ask? Well, here in Phoenix our high capped out at 97. It is currently cloudy and 88 degrees with a steady wind. There is a high chance of rain this evening. I am declaring this moment in our weather, even if it is simply a blip on our otherwise hot weatherscape, pumpkin muffin weather. Just because I can.
Baking is more entertaining with an orange cat. Note: he was not impressed with the length of the bake time.
We went to the Phoenix Art Museum a couple weeks ago, trading our long-time Science Center membership for a bit of culture.
Carter enjoyed the scavenger hunt, checking off the found items with minimal art appreciation.
I did capture a bit of appreciation and one of us reflected right-side up and upside down in a shiny sculpture of some sort.
And then there was Carter, finding art where art did not exist. Or at least it was not defined as art in the eyes of the curators.
I was drawn to pieces that incorporated lots of empty space. Perhaps it reflects my want for less clutter in both my physical and mental spaces.
I am not sure we left there more cultured than when we started, but we conversed about art and enjoyed our time together. That is more than enough for me.
Hope you are having a lovely Sunday!
Shoes On The Wrong Feet 