Voices

 This is an essay in futility perhaps. My conscience says “No, I can never post this. I can never even show it to anyone. I should probably delete.” That sort of honest person who I am sometimes does deserve a voice. But that person who I am a lot of the time does not listen. She is a stubborn old bitch. Not going to delete today.  Maybe tomorrow. Oh, shut it. Post and be done.

 Here is what I want to say. Here is what I have to say. Every morning it is a fight to make myself face another painful, boring day. Every day I have to make myself have patience with small but so frustrating things. Many days I worry about what the future is going to bring and how bad it is going to get and how I am going to be able to cope. I can’t cope, sometimes, now. Some days it all seems entirely useless. Futile. And exercise in rolling the rock uphill.

 I have been reading and rereading this, correcting minor errors and trying to make things clearer without losing my unique voice. Whatever that is. There are many voices, I guess, many babbling streams of rhetoric and less than deathless prose. I am, at times, the cheerful and eloquent reporter about birds and leaves and lovely weather. I am the proud repeater of the daughters’ and granddaughter’s achievements and amazing journeys. I am a somewhat biased and occasionally informed commenter on political events. Sometimes I read and analyse what I have read. Sometimes I do not even proofread.

 Frequently I am writing to be another person.

 This is not always who I was. I used to be a busy, almost too busy, person with contributions to make, I thought, to my community and my family and my friends. I made things, useful and just pretty. I cleaned things. I edited and weeded, both literally and figuratively my possessions and my home. A load to the dump. A wheelbarrow full of broadleaf to the back of the rocks. A fun or funny post created. A speech written or article collaboratively planned. I guess that woman would still like to be around, but the honest woman knows she cannot be.

 One of me has been working on this for over a month now. It was three pages and growing. Editing woman pared it to this. And will leave it for one more round before deciding whether to make it public or not.

 Later. It is a lovely sunny day in early October. A month since I posted. We have had JG’s 85^th birthday and I fed the remains of his cake to my discussion group. JG seems to be pleased with the cookie cookbooks I gave him as his present. I also fed his cookies to the discussion group women, and two of them took extras home, which flattered the baker. We also had Thanksgiving dinner here, my wonderful daughters presiding. After starting the turkey, I got to sit and listen, as there was no way I would have lasted in the kitchen maelstrom.

JG has a fine thermometer that can be tracked on his phone. He inserted this into the bird. In spite of much discussion about whether the bird was cooked or not, it ended up being just right. Given that I have presided over close to one hundred turkeys as they roasted, most without any aid other than my estimation of cookedness, this should not be surprising, eh? And, yes, there is a substory here that I am not going to tell, cautious person presently presiding.

 Okay. I am posting. Cautious person loses. Editing person is shutting down. Stubborn person is probably who I really am.