Hanging In There

 I am married to a worrier. One of our Christmas gifts was a computerized bird feeder; to charge it, you pull a tiny white plug out of the body and shove in the charge cord. Thinking that I was being super careful, I retrieved an empty pill bottle with no label from the bathroom cabinet and put the tiny plug into it for safekeeping. Just now, the worrier came into my office, looked at the bottle and commented that it was worrisome because the plug could be mistaken for a pill and swallowed. After a headshake and a bit of grumbling, I got a sticky label out of my office shelf, wrote on it “Computer plug. Do not eat!”, and stuck the label onto the bottle. I also wrote “Do not Eat” on the bottle cap. The worrier’s comment was “Much better.” Please note that if you wander around rooms in your house picking up stray pill bottles and eating the contents, the worrier will try to ensure your safety.

My mother was also a worrier. In the last winter of her life, she was still at her concerned best, and one of her concerns was that I should wear a hat in winter weather. I confess that I kept a hat on the front seat of my car and I would pull it on as I took the last corner before their street, thus looking defended from the weather as I pulled into the driveway and walked up the walk to the house. Worrying was hard on her, though. My father had the habit of taking a mile walk whenever the roads were clear enough to allow this. My mother had him timed and, if he did not return when she expected him, she immediately imagined terrible accidents that could have befallen him. She always imagined the worst. My father was fairly patient with this, but only to a point. If he wanted to stop on his walk and chat with a neighbour, he did so, even if it made him ‘late’.

Me, I do not worry. Or, mostly I don’t. If a daughter is off hiking solo in the Namibian desert, I love her competence and have a fair amount of confidence that she will manage to survive. If her plane is late, I figure it is weather or the airline botching things up. I confess to feeling that it was a long day as we waited for news that our labouring daughter had -at last- produced the baby. But since I had spent from a Sunday morning to a Monday afternoon producing her, I was not imagining disaster, just slow progress. Our children were raised ‘free range’, if that expression conveys a fair degree of autonomy and calculated risk. I had very little of either and that is, I think, one of the factors that has shaped my own attitude.

That attitude includes, for example, the thought that if you eat something unknown out of a pill bottle sitting on a desk, you deserve to have to find it later. Providing, of course, that you have survived the experience. But, to prevent misunderstanding, I will finish by saying that I love both the worriers dearly, as well as a daughter who checks her purse for her passport five times between home and the airport. That the worry gene skipped a generation with me is something that does not worry me.

'Twas Two Days Before Christmas ...

 

It is the day before Christmas Eve here in Lanark, and the child is nestled all snug in her bed, being still much plagued with the six-hour time difference between here and Brussels. Papa, capless, is reading in the living room since it is not yet the time for him to, tired, retire. And I am in my office, contemplating chaos. (I should still be writing Christmas Cards. Shh.) There are presents still to wrap and label (I think I remember whose electronics are whose), pies and aspic to construct and the table to beautify into its Christmas dress. The tree is the best it can be and has, courtesy of a sale at our local hardware store, a nice new red skirt to go with its bright red lights and all of the coloured balls I could unearth from the boxes of Christmas Stuff.

 Ah, the Chaos of Christmas. Not outside. There all is serene. There are little (not rein)deer out and about, notably a mother with this year’s fawn in tow. They come and check out the feeding station regularly. And we have small birds back at the feeders, after an hiatus of several months when we had blue jays and mourning doves and not much else besides grackles. I have heard the pileated woodpecker twice, quite close, but have not been able to see it.  There is a bit of new fallen snow, but it is supposed to melt over the weekend and I guess I have to hope for that as the Christmas Bird is presently resident on the screened porch in a styrofoam container and if the temperature stays too far below freezing point, I will have to juggle it inside and outside to maintain refrigerator temperature until Monday.

 It is inside, and not just inside the bird, that is still unorganized. I did what I devoutly hope was the last bit of shopping this morning (and all the Christmas clobber was 50% off; got to love that). Speaking of refrigerators, ours is bulging. And on top of that, a neighbour dropped off our order of maple syrup and maple sugar, quite a large box full. The strong and agile daughter has lugged some of the Christmas storage boxes back down to the cellar to await refilling, but there are still three left beside the stairs. And the tablecloth is sitting on the ironing board. The candles for the table are balanced on a bookcase in here, and the lovely Christmas-themed tea towels that have been other years’ gifts are, although ironed, still in the laundry room.

 Well, I have one more day. At least I am not standing beside my mother’s bed in the ICU trying to finish knitting a Christmas gift sweater, with the wool stuffed into one pocket and the instructions back at home. All my nearest and dearest are near and healthy and, in the main, cheerful. And, accordingly, so am I.

 Some of you, blogging friends, are in new situations this Christmas time. One of you, maybe two in fact, are in the Maritimes and, I think, without electricity. Some of you will be anticipating the day with joy and no Big Dinner. Smart, that. One of you, I read, is bugged. Whatever your day brings, I wish you contentment, peace and at least a moment to count your blessings. As I, in spite of whining about the turkey, am counting mine.

On the Runway

 It is afternoon in Lanark Highlands, and I have just attempted to make myself a cup of coffee with my fine, single-cup machine. Unfortunately, I did not put a cup under the spout. When I do not add a cup, the coffee pours into the bottom of the cup stand and this, thank goodness, is detachable. And so. having poured the coffee from the stand into my cup, cleaned the counter and wiped up the floor, I am about to drink the coffee. Once, that is, I have microwaved it to warm it up again.

So goeth life in Lanark, managed by a geriatric brain. My next job is to 1.) find the Christmas cards I stored away last year and 2.) figure out those to whom I am still sending paper cards via snail mail and 3.) write up the Christmas letter that accompanies the cards, both electronic and paper, for those friends whom I only contact a few times a year. After, that is, I get the coffee out of the microwave. I can’t write without a cup of coffee, preferably hot, beside me. It used to be a coffee and a cigarette but those days are long, long gone.

It is now bedtime in Lanark Highlands and the Christmas cards, those I have been able to locate, are piled up on my table. I have also designed and printed a proof of a card, because I did not keep enough over from last year. And I have a draft of the Christmas letter I put in some of the cards as a way of keeping in touch with distant friends.

But it is bedtime. Also, time to wish the Blog and bloggers Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, or whatever you celebrate, with or without a Roast Beast. If I do not stop this and post the dern thing, I will be sending Easter greetings. 

May your days be merry and bright.

M

December Diary

 It is the seventh of December, and I have just finished an online order for a Christmas gift. For myself. When I pointed this item out to JG in the catalogue, he did not so much as cast an eye over it. ‘Order it for yourself,’ he said. This instruction could mean a) that he has a gift for me already or b) that I am supposed to wrap it when it comes and put it under the tree. So goes our life. Computerized and complicated. The joys of being over eighty and, to an extent, housebound with one another.

I was going to write the dreaded Christmas letter this evening, the one that I fold and insert in the cards that I send, still, in envelopes with stamps on them. But that paragraph was what came up to the top of my mind and I do not think that it is a good opening paragraph for a cheerful and factual account of 2023. Not that my Christmas letter is usually either of those things. The big event of this year was the insertion of my nice new metal knee into my leg. We also had to have some big but dangerous trees cut down close to the house. All of the children and grandchildren are continuing to do what I described them as doing last year. And if I write about what I think of world news and politics, the candles on the bottom corner of the paper will melt.

We had book club this morning but there were only three of us there. COVID, other illnesses of member or member’s spouse, a family death, and other stuff. It’s December, after all. The topic was Children’s Literature and we had one really interesting presentation about, wait for it, ‘bibliotherapy’ with a selection of books for three age groups to illustrate it. (Never mind the melatonin for your tot; read him ‘Goodnight Moon’ several times.) I have to bug this creative member for her book titles. She had a pile of them and since I was sitting beside her, I became sidetracked by reading one. I am supposed to be the club’s recorder, but I have not even done November’s report yet. It is sitting on my desk in pieces. Anyway, we did agree on topics for the next three months. January will be on mysteries since the holiday clatter makes it hard to read seriously. I don’t much enjoy mysteries, but any book is better than none.

Next week is another club and one which I love. We call it ‘Discussion Group’ and our leader, she who thought the idea up, sets us a topic. Not a heavy, do your research sort of topic, though, but something topical or that affects all of us. A lot of medical stuff; we are all old ladies. We have one member who insists we have a cheerful piece to the discussion. And I love that and love her for insisting on it. She is a wonderful and thoughtful person who is dealing sensibly and courageously with a medical condition that would devastate me. She has lost most of her sight. And yet she carries on, even with the book club, using audiobooks and her amazing memory.

And the week after that, the YD will be home. It is devoutly to be hoped that enough of the snow and ice will melt off the trees that the daughters can select their usual Lanark slightly unsightly Christmas tree. And put it up. Then Christmas can come, even if I have not sent a single card.

Mulled Mind

 

A Facebook friend posted this meme: Tell me three things you like about yourself that aren’t ways you serve others. 

I answer these things. It is like popcorn for my brain; can’t stop thinking about it. And so, my answer was: I write well, I read voraciously and all the rest is housework. After I wrote that, I thumped off down the stairs to the laundry room where I dealt with socks, emptied the washer and did some ironing. After I ironed the shirts, I carefully ironed two flat sheets. And, since ironing is not an intellectually challenging activity, I was mulling over my answer as I shoved the steaming iron around.

You see, earlier that day the man in my life had informed me that he had taken his shirt upstairs. It had been a bit damp, he said, but not badly wrinkled. Since aforesaid shirt was one I had hung on the line to air dry before I ironed it (it’s Vyella*), it crossed my mind that I was surely not ironing those shirts to please him. He has said more than once that he is quite happy to wear them as they come out of the dryer. And as for ironing the sheets (and the pillowcases and the dishtowels), no one in the family cares and daughter two has even gone so far as to remark that I must be nuts. Oh, and I iron handkerchiefs. There is an excuse for that, well, two. Germs and the satisfaction of a neat pile in the drawer.

It is, I mulled, obviously my own satisfaction that I am seeking as I make neatly folded stacks of pillowcases or dishtowels. (I also fold the bath towels in three and twice more, so that they will make neat stacks, and I sort them by colour so that the piles match – hand towel beside bath towel.) The way that looks is the way it should be. Or, if I were another friend, The Way It Should Be. That’s how my slightly OCD mother did things. That’s how they are done. The husband should look ironed. The white tee shirts should not be inserted into the washer with the black undershorts lest they exit slightly gray. And, when these things are correctly done, I am satisfied.

But the question is, do I like this about myself? Liking is not satisfaction, exactly. (Mulling, more and more.) The rest of what I use is not tidy. My office cupboard and the desk drawers are A Mess. My drawers for clothing, ditto. These latter used to be tidy. Sorted by season and by colour and in piles separated by spacers, ditto the socks. Now I am just throwing the clothes in anywhere. I keep thinking I will tidy it, but to do so I will have to put a chair in the closet because I can’t stand bent over for more than a few minutes at a time. (That’s a fine excuse, yes indeed. If I had not let the drawers get into a mess, I could put things away in a few minutes and not have to resort to a chair.) So, I am not liking myself here. I am not measuring up to this ridiculous standard I have set myself. 

As I reread this, I found myself snickering. How about 'Tell me a thing about yourself that you find amusing'. 

As for the original answer,  for the writing, well, this is an example. The reading … is how I live and where I have my being.

*Vyella is a trade name for fabric that is 90% cotton and 10% wool. Ironed, it is warm and smooth and luxurious.