Everyday Life in MIddletown
February 4, 2018
9:00am.
It’s prettier outside this morning and the wind has died. L and I have continued to talk about death and dying and dead since his Daddy died. Last week while he was taking a luxurious bath in my oversized bathtub while the sharks were fighting all around him he said, “Gramma are you listening”? I said yes as I continued to look at my phone while sitting in the bathroom with him. He’s four and a half. He wanted to know if all sharks are mean and, if they kill each other. I said no I don’t think so. They get along with their own kind. “Well, what happens to their shark body, he said. I said well I think something else will eat it if it dies.
I was still looking at my phone checking important stuff. He said, Gramma, I have a cold rock right here in my belly. It tells me that Daddy is just nowhere. I got up and went over to the tub and leaned in to say what, “will you tell me that again”? I wasn’t sure that I was listening. He said it again. My mind went into a kind of flurry like the snow this morning. I wanted to take a video so that I would remember it exactly like it was in that moment. Then the moment was gone and, I reflected on how often I tell my students to use their breath as way of returning to the present moment. It is all that we have and, I know it. Later in the week Luke and I had another tearful moment of missing Daddy. I told him that I think that maybe there might be an invisible spirit or Daddy,s personality or something that went somewhere nice in an invisible kind of way. I said that no one really knows for sure. He said, “ I think he is just gone.” I said 1yeh, me too really.
9:46am. My friend K moved here last Thursday from Colorado Springs. We have been friends since I was fifteen and she was sixteen. She is here for breakfast because she hasn’t unpacked. She did real well on selling a house out there and moved here to simply rent and live small for a time.
11:13 am. Breakfast Sweet Potato and eggs and Brussel Sprouts sprinkled with memories of our somewhat raucous adolescence. Now we are going to finish unloading the moving van.
11:48 am. I’m waiting on J who is my husband of nearly one year. For him it has been a leisurely Sunday morning of guitar playing and singing and caring for our fourteen week old golden retriever. He is going to help us move a couple of pieces of furniture from the downstairs apartment where my friend has moved into the upstairs apartment which I have furnished for a young woman and her son who lost everything including a husband in a house fire. Thats all I really know about that. This will be the third time that he has moved this particular piece of furniture which i want moved around in the furnished apartments from time to time. I am hanging on to it because it had belonged to my grandmother and now it is mine.
3:33 pm. We made progress on the moving and unpacking today. We completed a nice Sunday meal with friends of curried Lentil Stew with last years garlic and frozen green beans and fresh carrots harvested in January. It is a privilege to cook whatever I want.
We have a gig lined up for the end of March so, we are working on a set list this evening. I’m making a notebook and we will run through songs for an hour or so. This really is the first weekend in about eight weeks that we have had time without responsibilities for kids or grandkids.
Helping my friend K move has made for an eventful weekend. It has been a nice break from familiar routine. We even made time for the Civic Theater production of “Rock of Ages” llast night.
6pm. It was a good jam. We get to take a little walk with the dog now.
7:30 pm. It’s a little colder out.
It’s already time to snuggle up with a book or a movie and my husband.
This has been a meaningful exercise for me today. I appreciate the notion of being mindful of every action that I take. I am pretty sure that my happiness is the direct result of my internal response and external reaction to circumstance both past and present. I try every day to quiet the unending chatter in my mind. It’s never about the Super Bowl in my home but, I’ll most likely watch the clip of the halftime show sometime tomorrow.
