Appreciation

 My neighbors gave me a going away party last night.  It was an odd sensation. Off the top -of my head I think the only other time a group of people gathered to celebrate me was the baby shower when I was pregnant with Adam.  I’ve had birthday parties of course. Not sure why those felt less personal sort of obligatory.  But last night felt different  It was just the local friends that have been part of our house parties for years  and at one point the hosts asked everyone to share a Kathleen memory.  It was fascinating the things they remembered that had touched them.    

I have very ambivalent feelings about being complimented   Fear that folks are “just saying that” to be nice or feel they have to come up with something to say. Yet I feel that I am an “artist of appreciation”, am able to notice and savor aspects of people, or art or some experience that other people might either ignore or not feel meets their standards.  If I have that art to appreciate perhaps I should acknowledge that some people may indeed see who I am and what I do and value it.   

The vulnerability for me is I don’t want to need their valuing, to expect it,  to alter myself to get it.  Somehow it feels safer to avoid feeling particularly appreciated.   76 years old and still insulated from others approval.  Maybe it’s time to melt a little into the fact that some people see some of me and it truly touches them. That Quaker spark of the divine is able to be seen in everyone, even in me.  Appreciate it

Bread Crumbs

 I’ve been waiting to feel some restless desire for …..something?  Something that would lend itself to researching opportunities, taking some action.    Crickets.   But I am noticing a few odds and ends of attraction which might be bread crumbs toward  something?

I’m enjoying playing with the idea of how our stories alter our experience of reality   I’m wondering if Story Corp (I believe there is such a thing?) might be something to look into.  Though in truth it’s the psychological impact of the story frame we chose  that interests me more than the story content.

I watched a movie where a group of disparate women developed a comraderie as they took on a challenge together.  There is some attraction to that idea though my years in the public school system largely drove any of hope of that away.  Still it’s a bread crumb of interest.  Not enough to discern a route forward  but still  perhaps the beginning of a beginning?  Bread crumbs may be a dream fragment or a psychological raised eyebrow     I think I need to gather many of them before I can find a theme plot a course

Making It Work

 Everything is frictionful.   “Blah” said Toad.  I could say face to face with the second step, but it isn’t.  It feels like every step.   Like doors that won’t shut and no good place for laundry,  it feels like all the daily tasks that I did unconsciously and comfortably out at the farm, are now all friction.                                             But there’s no going back.     The farm is rented, my stuff dispersed or stowed  (another problem is stuff moved toward the end, I have no memory Where it is!)   I am here and need to make it work.   It’s a slog

So what story do I tell myself about this moment ?  I think tapping into the experience of friction and little irritating rough patches suggests the image of sanding and refitting a wood working project to work well and glow with an aesthetically pleasing functionality.  That story suggests getting down into the weeds and  making  everything Work, fixing, reworking, replacing each irritant until the smooth working and familiarity allow me to move through this space, with ease , no alert caution needed.  

Or I could just be annoyed and ask myself What was I thinking!?!     I think I’ll make it work

Disorientation

 I’ve returned from my travels and have sort of fallen thru the cracks in what I call home.  Before I left I had started daily routines, the embryos of new habits  that anchored me to a new home base.  But then I joined a family reunion on a pond in Maine that has such ancient memory resonance that it’s part of my psyche’s ABC’s. And I was there with all my sibs, talking about stories and images from when Home first became a  reality.   Then I spent more time in Hanover my home from age 4-7. Also full of old magnetic images and memories.    I feel sort of like a force field of ancient memories has distorted my barely beginning roots of this being my here and now Home.    

I like to think about my thinking, and this disorientation gives me a little vertigoish sense of seeing the backside of my own head.  It won’t last; soon I’ll become engaged  (or mired) in the here and now, which is how it should be.  But seeing my new Life in a little room above a garage in the context of all my other homes, especially the farm, gives the new Home more moment, more symbolism more story potential.   

I have dream images from our house on Spinney rd and the cabin on Otter Pond.  My first apartment in Chicago has been a powerful dreamscape.  The farm in Bell Center hasn’t appeared for years  though it’s particularly  powerful when it does.  It’s the farm that Gil and I shared a dream of and created which of course figures most current images in the back of my mind.    What stories will it take to make this new space like the inside of my head, where I shed my persona  as I come up the stairs and discover  another deeper older me  waiting to be lived?

Loving with all my intelligence

 I’m alone with Ed, my brother whom I love , who is only a shadow of himself anymore.   It’s hard.  Partly from the constant vigilance needed to catch him before he wanders.  Partly because he’s there and not really there.  In some ways it’d be easier if he was all gone and then my heart wouldn’t be caught by old Ed playfulness or occasional astute remark.

And David made a careless error with his car which is going to cost him a lot of money.   I know how shame and self anger can be so destructive .   Another man I love and cannot help with his internal struggles    It makes me eat ice cream.  Somehow I feel the need for self soothing.   I wish I could come up with healthier coping mechanisms.      How can I face my own demons and self care?   It’s easier to anguish over those I love than to love myself “with all my intelligence”

That quote is from a poem by Adrienne Rich which I read years ago. It struck me at the time because love is so often thought of as immune to rationality and thinking.   I believe that Love is tied to the stories we tell ourselves.  And we can influence and choose our stories.  Choosing to love with all my intelligence means choosing stories which offer possibility, hope,  salvation.    

I love my son  He’s 46 yrs old and struggling.  I could fit all his info into a story of addiction, mental illness and character flaws.  Or I can frame it as a hero’s journey, with obstacles and personal demons which throw him into pits of despair but which again and again he rises from and tries again.  He lubricates his efforts with a preternatural generosity of spirit which he has had since early childhood and with a kindness toward those who are struggling or in pain.   I love that Hero though I know the outcome of his journey is anything but certain. I am choosing the story I tell because I know it is a story which allows growth, change evolution.  My intelligence says  this story is a gift my love can hold him in.  And I chose to love him as much as loving him chooses me.

I love my brother who is fading into dreamlike fogginess from his Alzheimer’s    I can tell myself the story that the  real “Eddie” is gone and that once he no longer recognizes me (not yet thank God) I can write off having a relationship with him.  Or I can chose to tell myself  that he is retreating into dream worlds but that they are His dreamworlds and so still a piece of the real Him.  I can chose to play with him in those strange stories , still playing with our mutual love of language and witty repartee  his somewhat caustic humor can still annoy me but it’s part of his charm too; he definitely hasn’t lost his charm!  The story my love says about him is that we will be in relationship til he dies, (and who knows maybe even after that??)  this story keeps me engages and connected to him  even at his most frustrating.   I choose to Love because seeing the positive, the marvelous, the touching keeps my soul moist and I believe the act of seeing that “goodness” feeds it, calls it into Being in the world. Not unlike teachers who see their students positives help them rise to that good.    Using my ability to see the power of the stories I tell myself and using them to further the Love in the world is my gift.   And I’m glad for it

Becoming Sick

 It’s been creeping up on me, the chills, the sneezing, slight headache, stuffy nose.    I don’t get sick often; have never had Covid that I know of.  It’s an altered state of consciousness and I hope it passes quickly. But it IS a different perspective!  Like the difficulty walking, I try to find something interesting about the change.    But I’d rather be healthy

Something more

 I’ve caught a whiff of “there’s something more I could be doing with my life”. What it is or how I can find it is unclear. As the daily routines which have filled my life for years is starting to slough off, I’m aware that other people fill their lives differently, Traveling or buying new toys, trying to recapture old glories, they may not be what satisfies me but there is Something More that I could do this lifetime.   I need to get a better sense of what is on the menu for 76 year old ladies of questionable fitness.   I need to actively think of collecting possibilities for this menu and then start sampling