Score!
Just as I was beginning to truly lament what I would ever do for pants until I'm as sleek and skinny as a teenager again, I remembered the box of stained, frayed, faded, paint-spattered and otherwise unwearable-to-work jeans and khakis Mr. A gave me last year to wear while working in the yard. They fit low and baggy, and they've all been washed so many times they're softer than an old t-shirt. And there are thirteen pairs of them! So hooray! The bottom half of my new slouching around the house uniform is ready to roll, and I didn't have to spend a penny. I also scored a fabulous weird asymmetrical wrap-around green wool cable-knit cardigan from the free box in Bolinas, which is my new favorite thing in the world to wear in the mornings when it's foggy. With a giant antique shell button brooch at the shoulder, to hold it closed.
I can't wait for fall. Somehow it already kind of feels like it, maybe because it's been so much cooler than usual this summer – usually it isn't this cool during the day until well into September or even October. I wilt in the heat, so I've been enjoying the change. And I'm excited for rain again! Maybe that will come early this year, too.
Before summer's over, I still plan to read the requisite Faulkner novel (I try to read one per summer). This year I'm actually on schedule – I bought a used copy of If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (formerly The Wild Palms) at my local independent bookstore on Thursday and am about halfway through it. I don't like this one as much as some of the others I've read; it seems to get kind of moralistic at times, a little heavy-handed in its pronouncements .... But it's a fast read. Someday I will also finish Ulysses – the one I started in June and aimed to have done by Bloomsday. That one is not a fast read. It's a decidedly UN-fast read. But I've got until next year now to get through it – almost ten months.
I never seem to say much about these family trips I keep taking ... I don't like to write a lot about anyone but myself here because it seems like if others want their stories told or interpreted online, they ought to be allowed to do so themselves. But one thing I will mention about my Idaho trip last week was that I had a really beautiful time swimming with my sister and my parents. I had been feeling self-conscious about getting out there in front of anyone in a bathing suit and I think my sister was feeling the same way, so I finally convinced her that if she would paddle out with me in the raft, we would wait until we were out of the line of sight before stripping down to our suits, and dive in from the boat. It was a good plan ... until I fell out of the raft still wearing my dress. It was good, though, because once it was wet I had to take it off, and once I took it off, I realized – we're here to enjoy spending time together, and we both love to swim, so why inhibit ourselves by our self-consciousnesss? The water was so beautiful! It's this huge turquoise-and-white lake that takes a long time to get deep, and we swam around with one of my brothers-in-law, and then more family came out in the canoe, with kids, and then my parents were there (my mom showing my nieces some fancy strokes), and suddenly everyone seemed to be swimming out there together in that beautiful blue water, and it felt so good just to be there with all my most favorite and beloved people in all the world. We used to go swimming a lot as a family when I was a kid and I always loved it then too.
Besides the swimming, I think my favorite thing about that day was rubbing sunscreen on the backs and shoulders and sides of so many people in my family, including my adorable little 9-month-old nephew, my brother and both of my parents. It makes me want to weep, just thinking of it! I love them so much, and I see them so rarely ... and my family is affectionate, but not in a super touchy-feely way – but I love touching people, and I don't get to do it nearly often enough – it's one of the reasons we have dogs! – so I loved being able to (allowed to) do this for them. With my dad, especially – my mom loves having me massage her hands and feet, but my dad isn't really comfortable being touched like that, so it was a huge treat for me to have an excuse to give his back and shoulders a good rub.
It's so moving to me, somehow, to see both of my parents getting older. I kept wanting to gather them both up in my arms and just hold them on my lap forever. Not that they're feeble or frail or in need of any special care – they're still only in their 60s and healthy. But I just miss them so much sometimes ... I hate even writing about it because it always makes me cry.
(Speaking of all that – the Jeeps has passed another milestone in aging: the other day I found a poop in the hall. It wasn't a bad one, but it marked the beginning of something. It's getting harder and harder for him to control his back end (legs, hips, and now this!), and as I watched him the day I found the poop I realized he's also starting to have trouble using the dog door. Sometimes it's a real effort for him to get his back feet over the threshold, even though it's only about three inches high. I suppose if (when?) it really comes to a crisis we can put up some kind of non-Tater-proof barrier in the doorway and keep Jeepers in the kitchen ... Because I can't really see making him stay out in the yard – I'd rather keep him inside, safe and warm and close to us and feeling loved and included right up to the end, and just clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up. He still seems to have a happy attitude and a good appetite, and he's become a real snuggle-dog lately, which he never used to be before – but I think that's mostly because he just never had anyone around who was as willing to snuggle him and love him as I am. It seems like a million years since he bit me for getting too close to Mr. A! He seems like a totally different dog now. I kind of miss him already.)
Also during this trip I was talking with my brother and brother-in-law about real estate investments and have decided, based on those conversations, that I really need to get over my math anxiety enough to be able to at least contemplate the thought of talking to a stranger about financing, interest rates, taxes, etc. etc. without completely wetting my pants from fear. To that end, I have copied a sudoku puzzle – a single puzzle, labelled "easy" – from the inside back cover of the in flight magazine, and have been trying for several days, off and on, to solve it. I've written and erased so many numbers already that the paper started to disintegrate, and I had to copy it again ... and I still haven't solved it. How do people do these things? I think the way my mind works with numbers must be something like how a dyslexic person's mind works with letters – I can feel the wheels spinning, but I never seem to get anywhere ....
Crap. I think there's a skunk in the yard ... no mistaking that smell, and Tater's freaking out. More later.
I can't wait for fall. Somehow it already kind of feels like it, maybe because it's been so much cooler than usual this summer – usually it isn't this cool during the day until well into September or even October. I wilt in the heat, so I've been enjoying the change. And I'm excited for rain again! Maybe that will come early this year, too.
Before summer's over, I still plan to read the requisite Faulkner novel (I try to read one per summer). This year I'm actually on schedule – I bought a used copy of If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (formerly The Wild Palms) at my local independent bookstore on Thursday and am about halfway through it. I don't like this one as much as some of the others I've read; it seems to get kind of moralistic at times, a little heavy-handed in its pronouncements .... But it's a fast read. Someday I will also finish Ulysses – the one I started in June and aimed to have done by Bloomsday. That one is not a fast read. It's a decidedly UN-fast read. But I've got until next year now to get through it – almost ten months.
I never seem to say much about these family trips I keep taking ... I don't like to write a lot about anyone but myself here because it seems like if others want their stories told or interpreted online, they ought to be allowed to do so themselves. But one thing I will mention about my Idaho trip last week was that I had a really beautiful time swimming with my sister and my parents. I had been feeling self-conscious about getting out there in front of anyone in a bathing suit and I think my sister was feeling the same way, so I finally convinced her that if she would paddle out with me in the raft, we would wait until we were out of the line of sight before stripping down to our suits, and dive in from the boat. It was a good plan ... until I fell out of the raft still wearing my dress. It was good, though, because once it was wet I had to take it off, and once I took it off, I realized – we're here to enjoy spending time together, and we both love to swim, so why inhibit ourselves by our self-consciousnesss? The water was so beautiful! It's this huge turquoise-and-white lake that takes a long time to get deep, and we swam around with one of my brothers-in-law, and then more family came out in the canoe, with kids, and then my parents were there (my mom showing my nieces some fancy strokes), and suddenly everyone seemed to be swimming out there together in that beautiful blue water, and it felt so good just to be there with all my most favorite and beloved people in all the world. We used to go swimming a lot as a family when I was a kid and I always loved it then too.
Besides the swimming, I think my favorite thing about that day was rubbing sunscreen on the backs and shoulders and sides of so many people in my family, including my adorable little 9-month-old nephew, my brother and both of my parents. It makes me want to weep, just thinking of it! I love them so much, and I see them so rarely ... and my family is affectionate, but not in a super touchy-feely way – but I love touching people, and I don't get to do it nearly often enough – it's one of the reasons we have dogs! – so I loved being able to (allowed to) do this for them. With my dad, especially – my mom loves having me massage her hands and feet, but my dad isn't really comfortable being touched like that, so it was a huge treat for me to have an excuse to give his back and shoulders a good rub.
It's so moving to me, somehow, to see both of my parents getting older. I kept wanting to gather them both up in my arms and just hold them on my lap forever. Not that they're feeble or frail or in need of any special care – they're still only in their 60s and healthy. But I just miss them so much sometimes ... I hate even writing about it because it always makes me cry.
(Speaking of all that – the Jeeps has passed another milestone in aging: the other day I found a poop in the hall. It wasn't a bad one, but it marked the beginning of something. It's getting harder and harder for him to control his back end (legs, hips, and now this!), and as I watched him the day I found the poop I realized he's also starting to have trouble using the dog door. Sometimes it's a real effort for him to get his back feet over the threshold, even though it's only about three inches high. I suppose if (when?) it really comes to a crisis we can put up some kind of non-Tater-proof barrier in the doorway and keep Jeepers in the kitchen ... Because I can't really see making him stay out in the yard – I'd rather keep him inside, safe and warm and close to us and feeling loved and included right up to the end, and just clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up. He still seems to have a happy attitude and a good appetite, and he's become a real snuggle-dog lately, which he never used to be before – but I think that's mostly because he just never had anyone around who was as willing to snuggle him and love him as I am. It seems like a million years since he bit me for getting too close to Mr. A! He seems like a totally different dog now. I kind of miss him already.)
Also during this trip I was talking with my brother and brother-in-law about real estate investments and have decided, based on those conversations, that I really need to get over my math anxiety enough to be able to at least contemplate the thought of talking to a stranger about financing, interest rates, taxes, etc. etc. without completely wetting my pants from fear. To that end, I have copied a sudoku puzzle – a single puzzle, labelled "easy" – from the inside back cover of the in flight magazine, and have been trying for several days, off and on, to solve it. I've written and erased so many numbers already that the paper started to disintegrate, and I had to copy it again ... and I still haven't solved it. How do people do these things? I think the way my mind works with numbers must be something like how a dyslexic person's mind works with letters – I can feel the wheels spinning, but I never seem to get anywhere ....
Crap. I think there's a skunk in the yard ... no mistaking that smell, and Tater's freaking out. More later.
2 Comments:
Your image of the family members arrving by water one-by-one or two-by-two is my newly fave metaphor for meeting family after death.
It's great also because it mirrors the image of hominid apes emerging from aquatic life.
"Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
the relationship that you have with your parents, as you describe it, is so lovely. And so very rare, I discover more and more. It makes me yearn for what you have, and your gratitude surrounding it is palpable.
--writermama
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