DIARY DAY
Tuesday, 14 November 2017
So, it’s midnight at the oasis. Well, not at the oasis, but at our home. The clock has just chimed 12. We’ve taken our vitamins. As I record this my husband is fastening his pants after having peed in the stool. I’ll pee in the stool now, then set atop it our vintage enamelware refrigerator tray. Made for vegetables, it’s just the right size for use as a foot basin. We use it to collect our pee during the night. In the morning when we go to shower, we first stand in it and soak our feet. It’s the most effective (and cheapest) cure and preventative we’ve found for athlete’s foot. We then dump the pee in the stool, rinse out the basin, let it dry and it’s ready for the next night.
What remains for us tonight is to brush our teeth. We’re using Colgate toothpaste. His toothbrush is orange and white, mine is navy blue and white. They come “free” with our regular six-month visits to the dentist.
We’ll both wear sleep caps, the long-tailed dangly kind like Ebeneezer Scrooge. Made of fleece instead of cotton. We wear sweatshirts during the wintertime to keep the cold off. We’re both wearing our underwear to bed now, which is not our usual custom. Usually we sleep naked in the summer, shirted and capped in the winter, unless it’s really cold and we have to put on long johns and socks.
MORNING COMES EARLY
It’s 5:27 in the morning. I have a whole riff on what it is to pee as I get older. I can’t always wait. It’s hard to get my underwear down in time. Maybe I’ll record it later today.
That’s the coffee pot starting at 6:00, which means I haven’t been able to fall back asleep. Which means I’m going to be tired today.
[more coffee pot sounds]
My artificial stimulation.
[more coffee pot sounds]
My substitute for sleep.
[coffee maker gurgles]
Coffee.
That sound? That silence? That’s the sound of the alarm not going off this morning. I turn over in bed to check the time: 6:21. I’ve been awake since 5:30 when I got up to pee. Turn over and shut the alarm off. It’s scheduled to go off at 6:21, so I’m not sure if the radio is not turned up loud enough or if my timing is that good. It’s set to the classical radio station. I lay in bed until 6:27 when I roll over again to look at the clock. I think, “OK, I’ll go ahead and get up,” but by then, the clock switches to 6:28 and in my personal numerology system, 8 is not as lucky number as 7. If I wait until 6:29 that will be luckier than 8 as a time to get up, so I wait until 6:29.
Out of bed, I walk around the corner of our four poster bed, its top rails populated by stuffed animals from my childhood, my dad’s childhood, from my grandmother: a velveteen rabbit from my father’s childhood; sleepy-eyed dog my grandmother bought for a dime at a yard sale when the neighbors decided to move west to California—when they moved back, she didn’t return the dog; grey donkey from my childhood; red snake that reminds me of the one I loved in childhood and gave to my boys after the divorce; silly little pink poodle from my sister’s booth at a flea market; pink fuzzy bear from a yard sale during the Matthews Covered Bridge Festival, reminder of the young boy who saw my husband and me walking along a Matthews street in cowboy hats and boots and asked where was our horses.
I put on grey-blue slippers. They are a gift from my husband, ordered from Czechoslovakia via a shop in Oldenburg, Indiana. I’m up before my husband, the norm now that he’s retired and goes to bed later than he ever did when he was working an outside job.
I walk into our one bathroom (sign on the door, “Gentlemen”). Get my navy blue bathrobe (which belonged to my late father) from its hook on the back of the door. Come into the kitchen. First thing I’ll do is take my Armour thyroid medicine with a full glass of water. The medicine is made of desiccated pig thyroids. I took it even during my long years as a vegetarian. Against doctor’s orders, but in keeping with a sensible suggestion found on the internet, I cut it in half and take half in the morning, half in the afternoon to stretch its effects out through the day. Each time, I drink a full glass of water with it. More than eight ounces.
My starting lineup each morning: water, then coffee, then poetry and Carl Jung.
I pass the open bathroom door as my husband is peeing in the basin. I admire his butt. So cute! We kiss good morning. Three times.
“How did you sleep?”
Like a Rhinestone Cowboy threads thru my head. I sing it aloud, use this as my answer to his question. The title phrase is all I know of the words.
Poetry reading this morning: Milton’s To Cyriack Skinner on what it’s like to be three years blind, how his world is illuminated from the inside by his conscience (pp. 138-9, The Standard Book of British and American Verse.) Reading from Carl Jung’s Red Book, (p 270): “Man himself is a piece of the darkness . . . honor the darkness as the light and you will illumine [it].”
By now I’ve downed a cup of coffee. I use the surviving mug of the two my former wife and I received as a wedding gift from my now-estranged bother and sister-in-law. My husband and I drink Columbian coffee because the taste is richer, fuller than regular blends. We make it with four scoops instead of the 12(!) the directions call for.
I help out with breakfast to the tune of burning Husband’s bacon. Shoot. He eats bacon; I avoid it. Especially when it’s burned. I stick with the steamed vegetables. I’ll use a fork and knife to eat British-style, scooping the food onto the back of my fork. Eggs from our own chickens.
While I was doing my quiet time reading my husband took a shower. Showering together is usually part of our morning ritual, but not this morning. But this means I can turn the water hotter in the shower today. (I like the water really hot; he prefers it warm.)
When I first look at myself in the mirror—oh, my hair has gone wild and I look a fright. Then I shave and catch a glimpse of myself smiling at myself and I think, “Ah, I’m a handsome man.”
I defecate and wish again for a bidet. I think about aging and the accompanying streaks in my underwear, the times I’ve peed my pants. I can’t hold my urine like I once did.
I don’t wash my hair this morning. I’ve learned I can let it go, wash it once or twice a week as some women do. My hair survives fine.
I check my underarms. I use Tom’s of Maine all-natural deodorant, unscented, no aluminum. My underarms are super-sensitive to deodorant and easily break out in rashes. Even this Tom’s affects them. I check this morning and my underarms are inflamed, so that means today at least, maybe tomorrow, I have to use Zeasorb-AF, an anti-fungal powder suggested by Muncie dermatologist Dr. Zemstov. It doesn’t do a good job of controlling odor. I set the container out as a reminder to put some more on when I am home for the noon meal. If I continue to apply deodorant, my underarms get more and more raw and red.
I’m standing in a bathroom painted by by husband’s hand a mottled rich buttery yellow, inspired by the apartment walls of our friends’ house in France. Bright, bright yellow. Theirs, inspired by the colors of Portugal, they told us. A beautiful way to start the day.
It looks cold outside. Not as cold through the night as it has been. We slept under the buffalo robe last night.
I read the user’s manual for how to record on this hand-held voice recorder I’m using to get some of this information down. I piddle whilst my husband finishes getting breakfast ready.
I move to the dining room table where I scotch tape the cover of our crossword puzzle dictionary after using it to look up Khan to get AGA (famous Khan) to finish the crossword for September 20. My husband and I have worked it together. He does crosswords to help his brain stay alert. I do ‘em because I enjoy wordplay. I write across the top of this one, “Tough one: too many names.” Actor Willem [DAFOE], Baseball’s Mel [OTT], Matty [ALOU] of the diamond, [ALETA] Prince Val’s wife, Writer [DAMON] Runyon—all in one section. Curse you, Andrews McNeel (of NYC, we assume),
I’ve already started eating my breakfast of steamed vegetables and eggs without waiting on my husband so I will be able to make it into work on time. He finishes frying his eggs, then joins me at the table. We always say a prayer of gratitude at the table. It runs something along the lines of, “For this day, for this food, for this you, for this love; we are grateful. Amen.”
I’m washing dishes in the sink, pick up a pot I think is empty to find there’s water soaking in it. Some sloshes onto the counter. “Woopah,” I say, and there’s my long-dead mother standing beside me as I inadvertently quote her exclamation of surprise. I’d thought of her earlier when I’d pocketed an apple from the bushel basket in the basement. If no one sees me eating food, the calories don’t count. I am my mother’s son.
OFF TO THE OFFICE
Icy morning. A reminder of what’s to come. And into the car for the ride to work. My husband’s outside to wave me goodbye. He stops me, asks if I can see clearly enough through the windshield. Although I scraped it, it’s fogging up. The bottom part of it is getting warmed by the defroster and is staying clear. “I have that part to look out,” I tell him.
“Is it enough?” he asks.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “Bye. I love you.”
“’See you later,” he says. “I love you. Have a good day.”
I’m watching my time because I need to get eight full hours in today to finish my 40 hours this week. I’m trying to get there bang-on at 8:00.
Driving past fields denuded of soy beans and corn, various houses, one farm with two cows. I like seeing cows—more than horses, certainly more than sheep. A reminder that Indiana does still have some truck with its agricultural heritage, that we are not all yet a state of city dwellers. Driving into bright sun now, which makes it important to have a windshield clear enough to see through, I’m hunched over the steering wheel looking out the bottom of the windshield. By now the bottom half of the windshield is clean, so it’s relatively safe driving. Touch wood.
I have to pee.
I’m trying to stay conscious, to keep track of notes for this project. By gum, it’s tough. So easy to go unaware of what’s happening.
And I’ll carry with me through the day the poetry from this morning and the reading from Jung. Not always consciously, but somehow I let it percolate in the subconscious and these things come back up.
So I’m trying to develop an attitude of awareness which is part of my life lesson: how does one become aware?
I pass a neighbor who is out chopping up a tree that blew down in the tornado-like winds that we had a week ago. Everything goes.
I drive past a cornfield. The corn is still standing. Now sunlight filters through trees on the right. I’m grateful for this.
And now to a dangerous intersection. Have to be hyper-alert.
No radio on my way to work. Used to be that I would listen to the radio as a matter of course. Always NPR on WBST. But for the last several months I’ve gone without. The news is all the same: one Trumpian scandal after another, wars and rumors of wars, opposing factions who refuse to compromise, money rules everything and those with it pull the strings, inane interviews with people who recite talking points and don’t directly answer the questions posed.
I pass neighbor kids waiting for the bus.
Four cars already in the parking lot when I arrive at work. They pull in nose-forward. I back in, as if I am ready to make a quick get-away. My little foreign-made car is flanked by huge extended cab pickups. The red truck to my left is a good match for its driver. He is a good ol’ boy and eminently suited to a big truck.
On the other hand, the driver of the over-sized gray car to my right is a poseur. I believe Him1 is a gay man still closeted to himself, struggling mightily not to become aware of his inner world, running scared of his feelings and attractions, unwilling to face himself, unable to articulate his urges, wondering why he’s depressed, why his wife excites him so little, why they are forever arguing, why marriage is so much work, why he’s so unhappy, why his face lights up when he talks of his male best friend and former roommate. He needs a big truck to compensate for his sense of inadequacy, so he’ll look “normal,” macho, masculine, so people won’t guess the secret he so closely guards even from himself.
A bright sunny day lifts the spirits, no matter how little sleep I’ve had, no matter what else is going on today, no matter what the work day is like. And here I am at work. How boring is that, right? I note I resist writing about my work-for-pay. Harvest tone color palette on the current project: warm gold, soft green, ruddy red, browns. As far as writing down what I’ve been doing and what projects I’ve been working on . . . besides being too identifying as far as keeping this anonymous, my work is not terribly exciting. I get to do some things I enjoy and get to be creative and that’s fun—trying to tell stories through arrangement of items on a page. But aside from that . . . .
There’s the usual office chatter this morning at work about basketball and sports at which I roll my eyes and could care less. Often it’s about television shows or movies or videos. One coworker in particular gets on my nerves when he uses language like “How are we this morning?” Or addresses a person in the third person, “”How is Him1 this morning?” instead of asking, “How ya doin’, Him1?”
I download a couple of YouTube videos (personal work done on company time) about how to use this new Olympus voice recorder. I bought it specifically so I could record information throughout the course of today for this Everyday Life in Middletown project.
I’m feeling old. With what reason? An elderly friend makes 82 look young. I hope I do so well should I get to live as long. As I approach 60, my body no longer works the way I’d like it to. I keep learning that when I have to pee I HAVE to pee. I need to get going. I keep an extra pair of underwear in the car because sometimes I don’t make it in time. Sometimes I pee all the way down the left leg of my pants because I wait too long; I think, “aw, I can hold it a little bit longer,” but my body doesn’t necessarily do that. Same thing with defecation. This morning I had to go and I put it off and I could feel poop start to emerge. I got in to the restroom before I left a stripe mark in my underwear, but it was close.
A coworker is fighting Stage IV breast cancer. She continues to show up for work day after day, even after severe chemo treatments that would knock an ox on its back. Had I more time, I’d write about how determined she is, how strong. How different her values than mine. How loyal she is. Her tenacity, her persistence, her dogged determination in the face of this dread disease and the toll it exacts from her. My wonderment at what it is that gives people life, how and where they find energy.
One of my coworkers showed up for work at 9:30 this morning, which is early for him, though our work day starts officially at 8:00.
Not that I have room to talk. I, who check my personal email and download YouTube videos on company time rather than waiting until break. I, who record these snarky comments about coworkers even if I don’t say them aloud. I, who make notes on a yellow sticky pad: “This is my father’s world, basketball/sports, how are we, broken wrist, aging, peeing/pooping, cancer, Him2, email/YouTube,” then get up from my desk to go on break to record these thoughts and look behind me to see there on the floor is the yellow sticky note. I think, “Dang, I am not so adept at covering my tracks or keeping myself secret as I would like to believe.”
Yet as a gay man, I have spent much of my life trying to evade, elude capture, detection, have learned to keep a low profile, fly under the radar, keep people happy, be a people pleaser.
I’m sitting out in my car now at work, audio-recording these notes. This is where I go to take breaks. We don’t have a proper break room. People smoke in the office building in what serves as a default break room space. This runs counter to Delaware County workplace regulations, but as we have dedicated smokers in positions of leadership on staff, we have an in-house smoking area.
I’m not a person who enjoys chit-chat, talking about sports, weather, movies, tv or rehashing the latest office gossip. This does not do it for me. I prefer to go off by myself and read or write or anything else. I wind up with a reputation at work (I think) of being a snob, stuck up, thinking I am better than anyone else, too good to hang out with anyone else at break, antisocial or plain weird. I’m not sure how my coworkers characterize me.
Among other conversations this morning, a conversation with a coworker about how sunshine raises the spirits. Yesterday she felt all day it was time to go home because the day was dreary, but today she has more energy.
I note we are so human, whether we are in touch with our bodies or not, we are affected by how our bodies feel.
Him1 talks sports with the men who work here, iced tea brands and restaurants with the women, movie and tv shows with anyone who will listen. When he should be working. Looong conversations, five minutes and more at a stretch. Hard for me to concentrate on my work when I’m jotting notes, when I’m listening to him. I time his 10-minute-20-second discussion about how to get his software to run on his new computer.
Then conversation turns to tv and movies. Him1: “I saw the movie Other Life—it was a nice mind-fucker. I thought, ‘Oh, wow, this isn’t bad for being a Netflix movie.’”
Him2: “I saw Monstering. It’s a little crazy. Has monsters and gore and shit. Gets a little sappy at the end. If you get bored and could use a sappy campy horror flick, it wasn’t bad at all.”
“There’s too much crap on TV right now, “ says Him1. “I like the TV shows that make me feel better about my life. I go home and turn on Shameless and think, ‘my day is not so bad. Not so bad.’”
A long silence as everyone goes back to work. Then Him2 offers food advice: “Hey, I tried the frozen mussels—6.95—at Aldi’s.”
Him1 has no concept of what mussels are.
Him2 explains: “They’re black and they open up when they’re cooked. They’re actually really good. Only thing is they have the shells. Takes up a lot of space.”
Him1: “I don’t like oysters.”
Him2: “Not oysters. Mussels. They aren’t gooey or anything. They taste kind of like clams and lobster…. I don’t know. They come with a little sauce. I was impressed. Six minutes to cook ‘em, throw ‘em on pasta.
Him1 snacks on carrots at his desk.
My former supervisor finds old habits hard to break. She comes by my desk and suggests I start on a given part of a project first.
Me: “Because—?”
I resent her playing mother, nursemaid, supervisor and superior to me now that she’s been moved out of that position. I don’t say this directly to her, but show it with my attitude and response to her suggestions.
I’m concerned about my 82-year-old friend who fell, fractured her pelvis and broke her wrist on Saturday. She’s at Ball Memorial. I was up to see her again last night. I wonder how she’s doing, how long she’ll be in there, whether it’ll be the two days they told her to expect or longer than that. Then she’s supposed to be off to therapy for two weeks, then who knows where. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end, the slow decline into the grave. Breaking a hip is for many elderly persons a harbinger of death.
Aging sucks. I’m still on morning break and I have to pee. I use the vintage glass hospital urinal jar I keep in the car rather than traipse back inside and lose a few of my precious 15 minutes. The other day the bathroom at Goodwill was occupied and I had to go. I went out to the car and used the glass urinal jar, emptied it into the median strip between the Goodwill parking lot and the Islamic Center. 16 ounces of urine at Goodwill; 12 ounces here today. Doesn’t take much to make my bladder feel full. In this I am unlike my husband.
Woo. My face is flushed, I betcha. I just found I’d received a rejection notice via email from the editors at The Broken Plate, Ball State’s literary magazine. They turned me down. And this was good work. A very well-written piece. Too racy? I wonder. It’s good. I’m good. I remind myself of this. Hunh.
HOME FOR DINNER
Now I am on my way home for the noon meal which I’ll share with my husband. Usually he fixes the dinner meal and I fix the supper meal, but as busy as I’ve been lately, everything has fallen on his shoulders: fixing meals morning, noon and night, plus doing laundry, housekeeping, caring for the chickens, carrying in wood. The list goes on.
As I drive home I notice I’m not so tired as I anticipated. It will probably hit me later tonight. I’m thinking about HOW MUCH time I’m putting in on this volunteer project. Good thing it’s a charitable effort over by Christmas. It’s taking a full three hours every night, five nights a week. I’m unaware at the moment what the current Trump debacle is, but I can bet there is one.
I’ve been thinking today about my actions last night. Did I come across as too gay last night at the volunteer meeting? I felt like I almost got the cold shoulder from one man. Is that because he knows now I’m gay? I came out to that group a couple days ago. Did he catch me eyeing “Sterling” once too often?
It’s a pattern for me: I get fixated on a certain man. A college man in the volunteer group fits the bill for me. I find Sterling attractive and I enjoy looking at him, watching him, seeing his energy, mannerisms, vitality, enthusiasm, quirks. The texture of his skin. Last night he pulled his sweater off and his t-shirt rode up to his pecs so I caught a view of his relatively flat stomach. His legs are a little more beefy than I prefer. His face is cute.
Then there’s my coworker “Humbert Clotet.” He has dark eyes, a tall lank build. I enjoy watching him. Yesterday he wore zip-down-the-thigh jeans that cling tight to his legs. He has other jeans that accentuate his buttocks to greater advantage, but the zipper feature conjures its own set of attractions. I look forward to seeing what pair he’ll wear today and what they’ll do for him.
I spend a fair amount of time each day thinking about men. I find I fixate on a few: men I’ve seen pictured in magazines or websites, an attractive coworker, a man I’ve seen on the street or at the gas station.
Still driving. My mind goes blank when I pause to watch it for what thoughts run through.
The other day in a field near our house I saw two deer, a doe and a several-point buck. I’ve never seen a buck standing out in the middle of that harvested cornfield. I often see a doe there, or multiple does, and yearlings. But never before a buck.
And here I am at home. We live in the country, beautiful house, beautiful yard, nurturing place. When we were looking for a home I told our realtor we wanted a place that would be soul-nurturing. “Huh?” she said. Eventually we found another realtor who said, “I know exactly what you mean. That’s the kind of place I’m looking for, too.” Not long after that we found this house on our own. We saw it advertised in the paper. Still went through the realtor to honor our commitment to him. And the house has been that. It has been soul-nurturing. We’ve made it that.
As I park in the driveway an oak leaf flutters to the ground. Brown leaf. Lands on the ground right in front of me. We didn’t really have fall this year. The seasons went from summer directly into winter for a couple weeks; now it’s come around to feel more like fall, though with very little color in the trees to show for it. The leaves have quietly done their thing, are letting go now, and without a whole lot of flash and sass.
In the background, a bird calls one shrill sharp note. If I were the avid birder my uncle and aunt in Alaska are, perhaps I would be able to identify it. It’s not a blue jay. It’s not calling “Thief!” As I turn to look a squirrel scampers up a tree.
We’re eating chicken vegetable soup for dinner. We’ll enjoy it again for supper. And so on throughout the week.
The recipe this time:
Two packages of bone-in chicken thighs from Aldi’s, skinned then boiled in water, then de-boned and diced.
Add the cooked chicken and the broth to the soup.
Entire head of cabbage, chopped.
3 carrots washed, not peeled, chopped.
4 stalks celery, chopped
6-8 sweet potatoes, washed, not peeled, diced.
3 onions, diced
6 garlic cloves, smashed, chopped.
3 T Italian seasonings
3 t salt
1 large can tomato juice
Leftover water in which we’d steamed-boiled a bushel of washed Red Delicious apples (gift of friends who have a home orchard) to make applesauce. This liquid gives the soup a sweet undertone.
Besides soup, we’re having sliced tomatoes from our window-box garden. Heirloom purple tomatoes grown from the seeds of a tomato Redneck Coworker gave me last summer. I found the seeds late this past spring and stuck them in little pots. Lo and behold, they sprouted up. I didn’t know what to do with them. All previous attempts at gardening have failed miserably because our yard is so shady. We don’t get enough sun to grow vegetables. We had a patch of paving blocks laid down in front of our woodshed so we could get access to the wood without tromping through mud; I lifted those blocks up and with a wing and a prayer, stuck the tomatoes in the soft soil. Grow or die, little ones. Next morning I found some creature of the night—probably a ground squirrel—and unearthed every last one of the seedlings, and ate or carted many of them away. I stuck the rest back in, swearing at Digger O’Dell and fully expecting him to unearth them again that night. To my surprise, the tomatoes rooted and grew very tall and leafy. “Not enough sun to set on fruit,” I said to myself wistfully, and so was surprised all over again when in late summer little tomatoes began to appear. While the frost held off, the tomatoes ripened and we harvested gorgeous-tasting, meaty, juicy, dark red, pink and purplish tomatoes.
We covered the plants with sheets on chilly nights and here we are, still enjoying fresh tomatoes in November. We have a few left in the fridge and a few more ripening downstairs in the basement. They’re sweet and juicy and ripe. They taste so good. We saved some seeds to try this again next spring. If it works, maybe we’ll expand that little tiny patch and grow vegetables out our back door. Apparently it does get enough sun for tomatoes. We’ll try putting them in the ground earlier next year and see if we can increase the yield.
BACK TO THE OFFICE
As I pull away from our house, I honk the horn three times in sets of three to signal “I love you,” “I love you,” “I love you.” I do the same thing with the emergency flashers as Husband is crossing the road to the mailbox and I’m driving away towards work.
Gorgeous day. Can’t get over how beautiful it is. Bright sunshine feels so good. Lifts the spirits. Makes me wish I had a job that had me outside on days like this.
So, dangerous intersection, I know. And here I am coming up to it and I see there’s a car and behind him a large green semi barreling down the road towards me and it’s either go now and go fast or wait until that line of traffic and the ones backed up behind him get by. So I gun it, even though I know it’s a dangerous intersection. I think, “well, I’ve got enough time and if I go fast they won’t be breathing down my throat.” So I take off, then I see they’re turning at the intersection anyway. Both of them, the car and the semi. I had felt sad for that car to have that behemoth barreling down on him while turning, but I see the semi turned off, too. I had plenty of time, as it turns out. Wouldn’t have had to race it.
The highlight of my workday arrives in the person of our volunteer. I artfully arrange papers and files so that as I appear to flip through them I can get an eyeful of him. He’s tall and thin, has big dark eyes and long luscious lashes. His butt is high and tight and depending on which jeans he wears, is highlighted more some days than others.
I’ve been hopeful today will be a highlight day and I am not disappointed. He appears in holey jeans. With no belt. (Somehow this detail matters.)
He suffers either a nervous tic or an overabundance of energy. I watch his left knee bounce up and down a mile a minute. His left hand rests on that knee. Mmmmmm. Something very attractive about his fingers touching that span of bare flesh. Wish mine were.
Whenever he stretches his arms above his head (and he does this often) I surreptitiously glance his way. If I’m lucky I’m rewarded with a glimpse of bare torso when his shirt hikes up. No such luck now. Or now. Or now. Drats. I do get to see the waistband of his boxers.
[visual image of male model Humbert Clotet: https://viewmanagement.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/wwd-denim-trends-vaughan-1852.jpg ]
I call him Humbert Clotet after the male model he resembles: tall, dark, lean, black hair, black eyes, broad chest, lanky. I call him this in my imagination. In actuality, I speak very little to him. I’ve fumbled my words, have mispronounced his name when I’ve tried. I avoid talking to men I find attractive. Always have. What would I say that wouldn’t make me sound stupid? I can imagine conversing with Humbert at length, but I clam up when he’s here beside me in the flesh.
His pecs round nicely under his tightish grey-green t-shirt, especially now when he sits up straight texting on his cellphone rather than hunched over his computer.
Usually I have more enthusiasm for his presence, but today I have no extra energy to expend.
This doesn’t stop me from watching as he stands beside his desk, thrusts out his butt in my direction and stretches on tiptoes to reach an overhead cord.
By mid-afternoon I can tell I’m getting tired. I’m getting grouchy. My co-worker asks me to do one more thing and I am not my usual cheerful happy self. I’m more lethargic and not willing to play along, do what’s expected or asked of me with my usual eager spirit.
Some random observations about work:
1. We use a cardboard box as a wastebasket in the men’s bathroom.
2. The women’s bathroom is larger and more comfortable and cleaner than the men’s.
3. We have more men who work here than women. If women living in close proximity instinctively coordinate their menstrual cycles, so men who use a single restroom learn to set their body clocks for defecation in optimal rotation.
4. One of the women who does work here is a clean freak. The boss is content to let her mop, sweep, dust, scrub and clean on company time. This means he doesn’t have to hire an outside service to do so. I used to feel bad that she was expected to scrub floors, and I made a point of volunteering to help her while my fellow male employees would watch her clean, move their feet and roll their chairs away from their desks so she could mop around them. I’ve come to see it’s her choice to perform these duties. When she is unavailable, the boss does hire someone else to perform these duties. I am now of the mindset, “if she wants to do it, she has my blessing and I feel no compunction to join her.” I choose not to do it unless asked or specifically instructed. I wonder if I am getting older and more crotchety or if I’m getting wiser.
5. We are a small enough company that individual personalities make an impact on all of us. When someone’s in a bad mood, when someone’s slacking off or sucking up other people’s time, it affects everybody.
6. We extend little grace to each other. Everyone becomes the target at some point or another of cutting remarks, barbed jokes, destructive humor, snide comments, cut downs. Usually made behind one’s back. I am left to guess what those are that are directed at me. These are the ones that most interest me, of course. And the ones I feel least empowered to ask about. I generally keep my mouth shut and refuse to speak ill of other people.
7. Because I don’t engage in office gossip, don’t cut other people down, keep things to myself, I am pressed into service sometimes as a confidant for various coworkers.
8. Employees are not above pilfering office supplies, especially pens. We can never seem to keep enough pens around. Time is another commodity that’s spent with disregard. I’m guilty of this, too. Company time used for checking personal email, phone calls and the like.
9. The boss is fond of saying that every employee has a double personality—the one they show him and the one they display when he’s not around. He cites an incident about an employee who worked for him for years. The boss believed butter wouldn’t melt in this man’s mouth until he happened upon him unawares and overheard the employee using extremely foul language to berate a fellow coworker.
10. Songs I’ve sung at various times throughout this day:
Like a Rhinestone Cowboy
This is my Father’s World
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Lord Lift Me Up and Let Me Stand
O Worship the King
We’re Marching to Zion
Roll On Little Dogies, Roll On
Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Little Drummer Boy
Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me
Faith of Our Fathers
HOME FOR SUPPER
It’s 5:15. I’m leaving work. Before I go, I look west to see the sun is a yellow ball in a grey sky streaked with blue at the base and hashmarked with white jet contrails. One jet is even now etch-a-sketching a line across the skyscape. Another contrail bisects the sky over our office. It’s been there long enough the northern side is feathered and frayed, the south side straight and intact.
I’m excited to be going home and sad that I have to leave right away for this volunteer project and what this means for my husband. I leave him to care for the home, prepare the meals, take care of the chickens while I go off for another three hours of work each night.
Our older friend who fell Saturday evening, broke her wrist and cracked a pelvic bone is to be transferred to a rehab place. I went up to the hospital last night after I finished with the project, so I was with her from 10:00 until 10:30, chatting, kissed her good night, held her hand, talked about how things are going. We get together regularly for supper once a week. Now that this volunteer project has taken over my life, we’ve moved our weekly get-togethers to the noon hour. We bring soup to her place and dine with her there. We were looking forward to resuming our supper times together after this project concludes. Now we’ll wait and see how she’s doing and where and what can happen. I’m hoping she makes good recovery. I watch what it is to age. I surround myself with—well, not with many people. My husband and I have few friends. Of those, a few are younger, two are elderly. And I watch my elders to see what it is to age, how they handle the situations that come their way in life. To younger people, I try to be available, if not as a mentor, at least as a wisdom source, a voice of experience when asked. It’s good for me to keep the doors open to involvement with all age groups, not to isolate myself with same-aged peers.
Our grandchildren: the oldest is not yet 12, the youngest is four. They have much energy and still enjoy spending time with their grandfathers. We enjoy spending time with them.
As I’m coming home the sun is half-sunk, a half-orb over the horizon. When I disappear into our woods the sun with disappear, as well. Our place always gets dark about an hour before the open fields on down from us, especially when there are leaves on the trees. It’s interesting to walk out of our woods and past the neighbor’s farm field and realize it’s still daylight in some parts of Indiana. Our chickens go to bed earlier than our neighbors’.
I’m parking the car in the drive, anticipating going inside, seeing my husband, kissing him hello, eating chicken soup again for supper, asking Husband about his day, how this diary project is going for him. I despair of ever having time to pull these recordings together and transcribe them into one seamless whole and get it sent in.
“Beautiful dreamer come unto me” I start singing as I enter the house. When he doesn’t immediately greet me, I check behind the door. Sometimes he’ll hide behind the door, pretend to be checking the cleanliness of the chef’s aprons hanging there. In our house, one does not always find one’s husband where one expects. But tonight he’s upstairs, sewing on his latest project. “Ooooh!” I say. “Zowie! Isn’t that cool!” when I see his handiwork. He is such an artist. “Wow! That’s great! Looks nice!” (this an actual transcript, as the voice recorder kept running as I walked in the door.)
He recounts the activities and projects of his day as we go outside together to lock the chickens in for the night. He did cement work, did diary keeping.
“Have you been writing down what you’re thinking?” I ask.
I did this morning,” he says. “I haven’t been thinking much.”
I laugh.
“I’ve been paying attention to what I’m doing and how I’m doing it,” he says.
We recheck the instructions for Everyday Life in Middletown diarists, thinking there was one other factor besides thinking, feeling and doing.
As we walk out to the chickens I wail “Beautiful Dreamer.” We stop to examine the cement work Husband did today. Our geese hear the screen door slam and start honking in excitement. I call back to them, echoing their one- and two-note cries with ones of my own: “Loockoo! Beebee! Neep! Veevee! Sehr! Beep! Jeep!” I have a habit of stirring up excitement (whether among animals or children), then leaving someone else to deal with the elevated energy levels.
“Chicken-licken-fricken-picken-dicken-curken-churken,” I call to the chickens. They’re pets as much as anything. I’m convinced we run a home for aged biddies.
Paying attention to what I’m thinking and feeling throughout the work day today I’ve run into some things I don’t like about myself, especially when I’m grouchy and tired. I usually sing my way into feeling better, into a better mood. Today I chose to be more sour and just think negative thoughts about some of my coworkers, let some of their actions bother me.
At one point today my former supervisor informed me my services would be needed shortly for an extracurricular project. I answered, “Okay.” Apparently she didn’t hear me.
“You hearing me?” she called.
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
“You hearing me?”
“Got it.”
“I think you’re just ignoring me,” she said.
“No,” I retorted. “I told you ‘yes, I’m hearing you.’ I think you’re the one who’s ignoring me.”
I read her response as a verbal jab at me and on this occasion decided to respond in kind. My usual tack is to play limp dishrag and either respond with a “Oh sorry, yes, of course I’ll be glad to help,” or ignore her comment and simply say, “okay” again. In my present mood I bristled a bit and verbally stood up for myself. My husband often counsels me to stand up for myself. This runs counter to my upbringing. I was raised to believe if I know I am in the right I am better off saying nothing in response to someone else’s comment.
Husband overhears me recount this exchange into the voice recorder and asks me for more information. He and I discuss the exchange.
As we get back to the house, I learn he cut his finger locking the door to the goosecote. His finger was caught in the padlock and the skin tore. It’s bleeding. He didn’t realize he was bleeding until we arrived back at the house under the outside light. We regularly padlock the outbuildings, our response to a rash of burglaries in the area earlier this year. Nicks and cuts are part of the price one pays for living in the country, for doing things outside.
I think about the quote from Sterling Hayden that I shared with Husband yesterday: something about you have to voyage and take risks, let go of the safe and comfortable and secure. Voyage and adventure requires trading out safety and security. For the record, here it is:
“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… “cruising” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
“I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security.” And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine — and before we know it our lives are gone.
“What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in — and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all — in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.
“The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
“Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? ”
— Sterling Hayden, Wanderer
This year a huge crop of black walnuts set on the trees and hit the ground in the windstorms this fall. We’re still walking over them, trying not to trip or turn an ankle on the hard round nuts. My husband raked up scads of them from the route we take to walk out to the chickens and other walkways, and more keep falling. We’re back at the house and I’m going to pee outside again before I go in.
I thought I might do video today but I’ve been far too busy. I hardly mentioned the chickens. I went out and locked the geese in, locked the back door to the chickens, looked in on the chickens as my husband was in the coop shining a flashlight into the nest boxes to gather the day’s eggs, but I didn’t go in and talk to chickens tonight. I was going to move the ecliptical chickens tonight—six eggs were laid on the day of the solar eclipse this fall. I was in the hen house while the eclipse was going on (I wanted to see if the chickens had taken to the roosts believing night was falling early. They hadn’t.) I watched a hen lay an egg. I took all six eggs laid that day and put them under a setting hen. Three weeks later she hatched out three black chicks, two brown one and one yellow chick (yellow chicks turn white as they mature). I was hoping they’d all come out half-black and half-white or show some odd colorings due to the auspicious day of their conception. We’ve kept the mother hen and her six ecliptical chicks separate from the rest of the flock. The little ones have grown enough that they are ready now to fend for themselves amongst the regular flock. I intend to move them at night as chickens are more docile in the dark as they can’t see what’s going on. Didn’t happen tonight. Later. Four eggs today, all brown. We get a variety of colors: green, blue, beige, dark brown, white, cream.
I review again Pat Collier’s instructions for what are you thinking, feeling and doing. Have I covered the bases? I’ve generated a lot of verbiage.
OFF TO THE VOLUNTEER PROJECT
I’m driving to the volunteer project now and I see the neighbors have turned on the Christmas lights on their big house. They pay to have someone come dress their porch and house to the nines. They have money to do such things; not so us.
Drats. I don’t know how to work this recorder. I thought I was recording a long monologue about how I’m running late and will show up tardy to this meeting and will be held accountable for the impact my behavior has on the others. I also explained the resonance this has for me about my growing up. Our family was notorious in our church circle (the only social circle we moved in) for always being late. A family of two parents and five kids, we seldom if ever arrived promptly anywhere. Our family motto one year was “Don’t be late in ’68.” We chose a variation on that theme for the following year: “Be on time in ’69.” It didn’t work. I felt the sting of embarrassment at walking in late when I was a kid; those same feelings attend my being late today.
This thread of thought leads me to the Sunday night church service we once presented as a family: my dad preached, we all sang a special number. We were supposed to sing our family theme song, “I have decided to follow Jesus.” If I don’t sing well, I at least sing loud and that evening I derailed the song and led the family off on some similar but different gospel chorus. My dad’s comment afterwards: “Well, that wasn’t exactly the song I was expecting.”
I still can pull people off track. I recall doing that at least one time as an adult in the church my husband and I attended on the southeast side of Muncie.
And then I think about one of the elderly ladies there asking me to sing a solo for church the morning she was in charge of the service. I told her I’d never sang a solo before and wasn’t comfortable with doing so now. She pressed the matter, requested it as a special favor to her. At last I agreed. She never asked me again. And the church closed soon after that. I’m not saying the two are related, but I’m not sayin’ they’re not.
I have been thinking about death. With my elderly friend with the fractured pelvis. We did get a phone call today giving us her phone and room number at the rehab facility. I’ll soon pass the cemetery where her husband is laid to rest. I’m not getting any younger myself.
I remember a favored witticism of Jay Kesler during his tenure as president of Taylor University: “At my age, I’m not buying many green bananas.”
I’ve reached the not-buying-many-green-bananas phase of life. Literally, I have. Several months back we changed our eating habits, taking inspiration from The Whole 30 book. Fewer carbohydrates, more protein, no sugar. Bananas are not on the approved list of fruits. Dates and cashews are on the enjoy-these-in-moderation list and I note I am enjoying these sans the moderation caveat. They have become my go-to food when I’m stressed and/or want a food reward. I notice my pants are not as loose as they had become. My current exhausting schedule is taking a toll in terms of stress. And I’m not helping with resorting to food as reward for making it through the day.
I was holding onto hope that changing my eating habits would lessen my dependence on thyroid medicine. “Not a chance,” the nurse practitioner told me the other day. “Sorry.”
I assume my thyroid, while not as desiccated as the powdered pig thyroids I take in medicinal doses, is partially kaput and there’s no bringing the dead back to life. This according to the medical model I operate under.
Which makes me think of my uncle and aunt who for years taught in remote areas of Alaska’s interior. Living among the native people, they saw and experienced things outside the realm of traditional Western convention. At the funeral of a local chieftain’s brother, for example, they witnessed a spinning spiral vortex of what appeared to be a glittering silvery substance rise up out of the coffin and whirl out of sight overhead. Too, my uncle recounted the warning he was given at a village festival where everyone arrived masked: “Don’t leave the celebration in the company of anyone you don’t know.” Apparently, an evil spirit was known to appear in mask and make off with the unsuspecting.
I’ll paraphrase: “There is more to heaven and earth, madam, than even a lifetime of living in Tempe, Arizona, can prepare you for.” (Was it Wallace Stevens who adapted this quote from Shakespeare for his own use?)
I’m trying to take a short-cut to get to my meeting as quickly as possible. The thing is, I don’t know Muncie streets very well and I am directionally impaired as it is. I don’t drive Muncie streets all that often. I prefer being a homebody.
As a gay man living in rural Indiana I don’t find an always-warm welcome. I have been taught to expect rejection and to stay on guard, be on the lookout for homophobia that may erupt in anti-gay violence.
We’ve experienced some of this with repeated acts of vandalism to our house over an extended period of time. It’s been several years now we’ve enjoyed relative peace and quiet. But for a while we documented regular, consistent and fear-inducing acts of vandalism. We reported these to the police, as much as anything to build a history of repeated aggression so that if we ever did catch the perpetrator, or if something especially drastic happened we’d have a paper trail of evidence that this was a pattern of behavior, not an isolated incident.
What am I thinking? And what does it matter?
Today at work I envied a female coworker her working with Humbert on a project. She sat close beside him, leaning over his computer with him. Did she notice his holey jeans? The exposed knees? The expanse of flesh lush with black hair? My imagination doesn’t require much to get it revved up.
I think of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes: ”In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. …” It doesn’t take much. I love it when Humbert stretches, raises his t-shirt up and exposes his midriff. Or offers a glimpse of what brand and color of boxers he’s wearing that day.
Why does it matter to me? I collect tidbits of information about men who attract me. Humbert’s birthday. His taste in music. The brand of car he drives. Type of tennis shoes he wears. It’s part of my way of being in the world that I care, find details fuel my imagination. I noticed today his grey-green t-shirt showed off his pecs to better advantage than most he wears. I get energy from seeing a beautiful male form.
[visual image of 1940s movie star Sterling Hayden: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/a2/3b/75a23b422fa0562df99b43afd5f70335.jpg ]
For similar reason, I look forward to this meeting tonight. One of my fellow volunteers is a sexy college student I call Sterling Hayden after the man billed as “the sexiest man in movies” during the 1940s. This young man has Hayden’s attractive face, height and handsome build.
I’m attracted to his curly hair, the youthfulness of his face, animal grace, soft smooth texture of his skin. Is he a gay man? I hope so. I suspect he himself doesn’t know yet. He’s made a few comments that make me wonder—he’s awkward around girls, he said, and doesn’t really date much. These comments remind me of my own college years and give me reason to wonder. A volunteer close to my age said, “I thought he said was saying he was gay, that he doesn’t date girls. Then I caught that he’s just awkward around girls.” I’m sorry I wasn’t listening closely enough to the original comment. I feel embarrassed to ask him directly what he said and what he means by what I did hear.
For me there’s a sense of camaraderie when I’m with another gay person. Even if we don’t know each other, we have a shared sense of what it is to be different, to be in a world not always welcoming; we share a sensibility, history and groundwork. I don’t always trust straight people. I don’t extend them the benefit of the doubt I grant lgbt people. This is especially true of gay men my age. I’m farther away from the experience of young lgbt people in current society.
I read yesterday about prohibitions against homosexuality being struck down in India in 2009, then recently reinstated by the country’s supreme court refusal to uphold the lower court’s ruling removing them. Openly gay persons are now caught in a state of uncertainty regarding their legal situation. Will they now face arrest and prosecution?
As I record this, I am driving Muncie’s back streets, not sure I am where I want to be, not sure how to get where I’m going. I turn down an alley, a side road. Jiminey Christmas. Every day an adventure. One stop sign to another. Still not sure where I am. I have two minutes grace left me. I feel some sense of “oh, yeah, this is me all over again. Rush, rush. Late, late.” One minute and less to go. Am I there yet? I don’t know. Could be. Shoot. Has this been recording all the time? I’ve finally made it. I’m two minutes late. I’ll shut this off, head into my meeting.
Three-and-a-half hours later, meeting adjourned.
Is it cotton? Are his gray-black Puma sweats made of cotton? How alluring, the way the fabric rounds off his buttocks, how it now clings to one globe, then the other as he walks. How the center seam gets pulled taut between, then slackens. How as he walks away my eyes trace the subtle flex and flow, ripple of muscle as if wind were riffling an especially compelling patch of dark water, life teaming below the smooth dark surface, masked to outside eyes but there nonetheless, felt, sensed, present.
“And now I have to go back to the life of a college student,” Sterling says as we exit the meeting together. “I have to study for a test and write a paper.”
“I don’t envy you at all,” I say to him, even as I keep my eyes glued to his buttocks as he walks quickly down the sidewalk ahead of me. I watch his gray-black Puma sweats cradle and caress those twin half globes.
I don’t envy you at all, Sterling? I envy you your youth, your energy, that butt, that face, a full head of hair, your good looks, the future that’s ahead of you, the experiences you’re going to have, the things you’re going to learn. I do envy you that.
I don’t envy you the way your heart is going to break. I don’t envy you the pain and the learning that’s going to come through it. I don’t envy you the frustration, dead ends, moments of extremity when you’ll consider ending it all.
But I envy you the chances for life that lay ahead. And wrapped up in that envy is a wish for good, a wish for joy and for finding yourself, pursuing your passion, following your heart, listening to what’s inside, being aware. For doing what you know needs to be done, staying open to love, celebrating and being thankful for all that comes your way so much as you are able.
ON THE ROAD (AGAIN)
So the meeting ran late. It’s three minutes ’til 10:00 as I pull out of the parking lot, drive down some street in Muncie. A few cars occupy downtown parking spots. Street lights glow. Traffic lights flash. A big silver 4×4 pickup truck from Ed Martin’s Auto Sales eats the road in front of me. Bed topper. Christmas lights shine in the windows of Concannan’s Bakery. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet. What, we don’t have time enough as it is, so we hurry things? Or is it we want to sell, sell, sell, so we have to get people in the holiday spending mood and mode as soon as possible? Am I being cynical? A crotchety old man?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m a crotch-it-ee old man, dirty old man. Maybe I’m just horny. Or maybe I’m feeling alive. Sexuality is part of the life force, part of what it is to be alive. Perhaps I’m making up for lost time, for having been sexually repressed for much of my life, shut down, not feeling the sexual attraction that now finds expression since I can now feel, give myself permission to notice.
I don’t know that I revel in it, but I wonder if I go overboard. I wonder if I spend too much time thinking about attractive men, fantasizing about what I might do with them, to them, thinking about male butts, thighs, pecs, arms, the body parts I find most alluring. When I see a sexy man (or a photograph of one) I often imagine making contact, touching, holding, stroking, feeling, feeling.
I hesitate to record these thoughts for I fear I’ll portray myself as a stereotype, an older gay man panting after young men, a chicken hawk, the tired stereotype of a gay man seeking sex, sex, sex. This is far from my reality, far removed from how things actually are for me. It occurs in my mind; doesn’t takes shape in outer reality.
I ask other gay men, “how do you deal with sexual attraction? How do you deal with desire? How does it operate in your life?” I get the idea that this is not an issue for everyone (maybe anyone?) the way it is for me. Or maybe it’s more common than I know in the sexually repressed Midwest and maybe I’m falling into the trap of thinking my experience is unique.
Still, one of my life questions is what do I do with desire? Is desire ever satisfied? Sated? Is there no end to desire? What do I do with it? How much power do I give it? And why am I so concerned about it anyway? Am I feeding the hungry dog of desire? Is that why it’s strong in me? Is he ravenous because I’m not feeding him enough real food? Is it a bad thing? A good thing? A normal thing? Is it simply what is? Must I attach a judgment to everything? Am I weird? Am I sick? Am I evil? Oof. These questions echo my growing up as a gay boy and swallowing the messages transmitted by family, church, society and more. I’ve lived with these messages so long it’s no wonder they still affect me.
Dang. Using this voice recorder is a blessing and a curse. And maybe more of a curse as I can foam at the mouth, get these thoughts down. What am I to do with them? How am I ever going to get them into some readable format?
Okay, I recognize when I’m expressing my wishes for Sterling Hayden and his future, I’m really talking about myself, about the part of me that I project onto Sterling. I’m really talking about the Sterling in me, the young sexy man inside me, the one with life and energy. The wishes I express are as much for myself as for the Sterling who sat across from me tonight.
This is what I wish for myself. And I hope I hear it. I hope as I’m saying it about him there’s a part of me listening, as well…the Sterling energy I carry inside.
All right, so the literary magazine editors at Ball State rejected my submission. Maybe the racy title of the piece put them off: Maybe I shouldn’t have included the word “cock.” Maybe I was inviting rejection by coming across as crass. You can’t expect us to publish that and call it literature. Not in our literary magazine. We’re too conservative for that. We’re not willing to go there. Your piece doesn’t fit with the mission of our publication.
Hmph. My being gay is the lens through which I view the world, through which I make sense of my world, organize experience.
Maybe we all have a lens of one kind or another. For my parents, it was religion. For me, it’s being gay. I divide my history into before coming out and after coming out. This was the watershed moment of my life.
I assign meaning to events based on my being an out gay man: surely that has to do with my being gay or not good enough or being deemed unacceptable, too gay or not gay enough. As if no other qualification matters. I know life is not all about sexuality and sexual orientation, and yet at some level it is. It’s the sieve through which life passes, the filter through which I breathe air, the prism through which light refracts to reach my brain, which renders input sensible. Whether it’s so for someone else, this is what it is for me. My life gets oriented, gets constructed around this. It becomes a primary focal point, a way of ordering my life and understanding the world. A way of assessing success, making comparisons, understanding others’ experiences.
My neighbor lady friend told me last night, “You are so kind and so understanding. I think that’s because you’ve been through really difficult times. You know what that can be like for other people.”
“Going through tough times can soften us,” I said. “It can soften our hearts and make us more open to others’ pain, help us hear them.”
Another theme in my life (and this comes from my religious upbringing) is that sometimes the most important thing I am called to do is bear witness to another person’s experience. I can’t fix other people, I can’t make choices for them, I can’t always change circumstances or situations, I can’t make it all better, I’m not God; I can’t rescue or heal them, can’t make miracles happen, but I can be present to them. I can bear witness. I can say, “yes, I see what you’re going through, I hear what you’re saying, I’m trying to feel into what you may be feeling. I can reflect back to you what that means to me, and how it affects me, and perhaps recount a time in my life where I had to deal with a trying time. If not that, I can sit quietly and say by my presence I am here with you, I am aware of your suffering, I care. You matter. You are not abandoned. I bear witness.
In making my way home, I cross an intersection where a former coworker was involved in an accident. He was driving his white van and pulled out in front of a car that had the right of way. I don’t know whether he didn’t see the car coming, if he ran the stop sign or what. He wan’t seriously injured although his van was. Not too long after that he moved on to another job and I lost track of him. This pattern has always bothered me. At one point I worked in fast food and what I found most difficult was the way people would leave suddenly without saying goodbye. No leave-taking ritual. No opportunity to wish them well or say thanks for what I’d learned from them or anything. Poof, they’re gone.
Driving by a specific house now, I am reminded of the spring day we were on our way into town and stopped along our road when we saw an elderly gentleman walking away from his car. His aged wife sat in the passenger side of the vehicle. Were they okay? Did they need anything?
No, they were fine, he assured us. Just getting some exercise. They were back in town for a class reunion and had some time to spare before the event began. These are his old stomping grounds. He described the house I’m driving past now, said he’d lived there as a child. Lots of history at that place. As a boy, he’d used a pocketknife to dig native American arrowheads out of the thick front door.
Almost home. Turning up our road. Feeling a swell of energy that I’ll get to see my husband. And a sense of wonder, wonder, wonder at the way two people can find each other, celebrate life and love together. Growing up, I never would have believed—dreamed—there could be such a person in the world and that he would hold my heart and become my life in the way my husband has. I don’t know what else to say except I am grateful, so grateful to live in a world where such things can happen.
And as I go to turn into our drive, here’s an opossum looking right at me with red eyes. Woo! He turns and runs into the yard. He’s moving pretty fast for a ‘possum.
My nighttime routine is to take my vitamins: a multi vitamin, a 2000 unit vitamin D, 3 high-quality fish oil from New Zealand (for lowering cholesterol), and a vitamin C. We were also taking echinacea (on the advice of a coworker), but we’ve run out of that.
Then I’ll brush and floss teeth (the latter because I have a dental appointment coming up and I want it to look like I’ve been flossing regularly).
Beautiful starry night. So few leaves left on the trees, it looks like the branches are hung with tiny white sparkly lights. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I’m glad to be out away from the city and able to see the stars. Such a wonderful world.
BACK HOME AND TO BED
The smell of cookies greets me. The fresh-baked aroma smells so good. I don’t know what kind they are, but I do know they’re made from scratch. Everything we make is.
My husband sits at the computer typing his handwritten notes for today’s diary into a text file. Eight pages of handwritten notes! Eight pages! Zounds!
He asks how the evening went for me. I admire the pillowcases he’s made to accompany the Christmas quilt he recently finished. I tell him again he trails beauty in his wake, keeps magic fairy dust in his pocket and sprinkles it over everything he touches. He creates patches of beauty, whether it’s the quilt on the bed and now the matching pillowcases, the cow stanchions he refurbished this summer and hung as part of a flowerbed in the backyard, the various other flowerbeds fashioned throughout the yard—he landscapes various sections to make statements with greenery and color. He’s consistently creative, whether with plants, fabric, wood, and has been at it long enough to have an extensive oeuvre of work. Quite amazing, quite impressive in the ways the pieces speak to each other. What one sees in the quilts one sees in the flowers, one sees in the craftsmanship elsewhere, the attention to detail, the angles and the way things come together, the color choices and what predominated and what is allowed to recede into the background. He has another quilting project laid out on the dining room floor that he’s working on right now. A continual feast.
The clock is dinging eleven. Having finished my second cranberry nut cookie accompanied by a spot of decaf coffee, I make tracks for bed. All things come to an end, even this diary day. As my friend and I were saying in the hospital last night, life itself is a long learning, a long leaning into loving and letting go.