December 15, 2018
Diarist A33
“Alexander”
At 2:30 a.m. I’m up to pee and check the wood in our wood stove. It’s still hot and burning well, but there is room for two more split logs and I put them in. This will hold ‘til morning. It’s warmer in the house than usual. I’m grateful for the warmth. I return to bed and snuggle close to my husband. It’s a sweet life to be able to snuggle up to the man I love. At the time I came out as a gay man, I could have been arrested for such a thing. I fall back to sleep.
6:30 a.m. I awake from a dream where I’m working at the local hospital and trying to find a bathroom. Occasionally I have this recurring dream where I’m looking for a bathroom and the halls and rooms are a maze. I eventually wake up and realize I should go pee. I check the fire again and move two logs together that are not burning, but hot enough that by increasing the air flow slightly they burst into open flame. I notice our 1800s German pendulum wall clock is near 6:30 a.m. and I think it’s almost time to get up. I return to bed anyway, think about what I could be doing, then decide to get on with the day.
My husband wakes up enough to ask if I’m getting up since I’m now propped on one elbow wiping my eyes. I tell him I am. He begins fondling me. Since we were gloriously sexual last night, I’m interested but not that interested. He reminds me it’s EDLM day and I thank him for the reminder. I find a pad and pen, go into the living room and sit in front of the fire to write. I’m determined to write throughout the day so I can send it in yet this week. I am good at procrastinating, forgetting details, feeling defeated I have nothing to say, then procrastinate more. Last diary day I never sent it in. I actually lost it.
The clock struck 7 and I’m off to make coffee.
I go upstairs to my sewing room. I’m looking forward to sew more on a Renaissance shirt I’m making him for Christmas. Sewing a garment presents a challenge in that I have difficulty understanding directions given on garment patterns. It’s like another language and I’m not privy to it. I try to get the gist of what I’m supposed to do then set about doing it as I see fit.
The Christmas season brings out for me an additional motivation to get things made and done. The time limit serves to push me to completion.
I listen to “On the Media” on WBST, a National Public Radio station. The program is about protecting people around the world from diseases and that antibiotics are available mostly to the privileged. The underprivileged are less protected. “Weekend Edition” comes on next with host Scott Simon. The program contains reporting on the Mueller investigation regarding President Trump and his election’s ties with Russian interference to get him elected. Sexual harassment claims by women from more powerful males in the work place is also discussed. I think it’s time that these issues be out in the open rather than “swept under the rug” by those in power or by our society’s acceptance that males, or others in power, can get away with abusing and taking advantage of those less powerful.
Today is forecast to be cloudy, 42 degrees with rain after 2 p.m.
At 8:30 a.m. my husband is up. It is too tempting to play a cat and mouse game with him in these early morning hours. He walks around a partitioned wall between the kitchen, dining room and hallway. I follow so as not to be seen. He knows I’m there but can’t catch up with me. Around and around we go until I hide behind a curtain and he finds me. We laugh. This is an old game we play. After getting coffee, I return to the upstairs.
Down for breakfast at 9:30 a.m. which my husband has graciously prepared. We eat our eggs and talk about the upcoming day, plans on helping a friend pick up wood at some later date and taking a friend to Winchester for lunch today. We shower, dress, feed and water chickens and our one goose. We leave to pick up our friend at 10:45.
It’s been an eventful day and here I am at 7:45 p.m. and I’ve not written anything since this morning. So I’ll summarize the rest of the day. To mark this December season of the year, my husband and I took an 82 y.o. friend to Winchester, IN. We went out to eat at Mrs. Wick’s Restaurant and bought pies for the holidays. She had been talking about this for a month and we set a date to take her.
We regularly have her over for dinner Wednesday evenings and have done this for about three
years.
This event was pleasant and held frustration for me. We traveled back-roads, through small towns she had not been through since before her husband died. She told stories about her husband, children, events and memories. Many we’ve heard before.
Her stories paint perfect children and family although that’s not the picture we’ve seen through the years. It’s a challenge to hear the recounting of stories that seem to contradict what seems to be reality, hearing repeated emphases on how multiple family members laugh continually with her “until the tears start to roll,” how “handsome” or “good looking” these family members are, how intelligent, motivated and successful they are. Little talk has been mentioned, (other that at the times they’re happening), about the physical abuse, threats and drunken behavior that also exists. To hear her tell it, the family is one harmonious, happy, successful family.
Repeated stories like these seem shallow and pointless, although I understand there can be a need to live in such a place.
The clash comes with my background of learning how to entertain openness, frankness, truthtelling, insightful introspection, and ownership of one’s own responsibility in any given situation with the end result, hopefully, of discovering how one can learn and grow from situations that arise. My philosophy is that by sharing life stories we learn from each other and are benefited from telling and listening.
This afternoon I wanted to shout “STOP TALKING”! Let there be room for someone else to talk. Let there be room for silence. Let there be room for thoughtful reflection. Let there be room for listening.
Maybe when I reach 82 y.o. I will see the necessity to have had a life filled with all happiness, devoid of hard realities, absent of questions and wonderings about life and how it played out that soothes my awareness of a shorter life span up ahead. I can’t foresee this being my reality at 82, but who’s to say? And why is this getting to me as much as it does? It seems my patience is wearing more thin. I realize my life at 72 is getting shorter and I don’t have time for what seems shallow and unimportant. I need people around me to be real and questioning. I’m looking for connectedness not distance, for solid truth, not painted ‘fake news,’ for confirmation that life is or has not always been one big party. At my age I want to hear what others have learned from their years of living and what questions they live with.
I also recognize I’m dealing with some levels of existential anxiety as pointed out by a dear
friend.
So today — I carry appreciation for warmth from the cold,
joy and challenge found in the creative process,
giving of time and energy to another person I struggle with,
frustration over a clash of values,
existential anxiety and search for depth.
The Christmas season – a mix of emotions, feelings, anxieties, joy and appreciation.