Maybe this is what a bear feels like when waking up from the long winter nap. Outside my kitchen window, the trees are in flower and birds hop gleefully from feeder to feeder. Sure enough, the robins are nesting in the bathroom vent again. And Carolina Blue is not just about basketball.
I've been in never-land for awhile, and still pass back and forth every day. But the renewal of life draws me out. I blink and look around, smell the earth and the icky scent of a subdivision full of Bradford Pears. They look so good, but EEE-EWWW. It's disorienting to find that life continues, with or without Mama, or me, or anybody else. Comforting, too.
I got a button on a Christmas present that says EAT SLEEP READ. I must have thought it was an instruction manual, because that's pretty much what I've done for the past three months. Oh, there are plenty of tasks --- more than I want ---- but I find myself taking cover in the self-soothing method I developed as a child.
My mother told me that I taught myself to read before I went to school. Ever the overachiever, I thought. But actually it was probably a ready defense. By the time I was five, I had three younger siblings. We were read to, but I don't imagine it was as much as I wanted. Anyway, when I was able to read on my own, I could get away from the chaos for a bit. I remember, as a kindergartener, curling up in a little window on the landing of the stairs to read by myself.
It was through books that I formed my dreams of who I could become, where I could live, what I could do. I was gifted with the ability to be transported into the story and share the adventures and perils and happy endings of the characters. I wrote, too, though precious few of those early pages still exist.
Part of the mourning process for my mother is going through the things she left behind. She had downsized considerably, giving away or selling a lifetime's worth of clothing, furniture, dishes and collectibles from all the places they had lived. Jill and I have many pieces in our house and they are part of our daily lives.
Recently, I've taken up the more intimate task of sorting through her papers. The grinding paper shredder confounds the dogs and cats, who regard it as yet another intruder in their domain. Much of it is routine and uninteresting, but there are also the letters, professional papers, fifty years of travel orders and her medical records from military hospitals. No earthly use to anyone, but I can't seem to throw them away. So back in the box they go, after a good look-see and floods of memories. There are Christmas Letters going back decades, documenting the highlights of our family's growth and change. Perhaps the strangest thing she kept was the folder of Christmas Wish Lists from all the family members for the last 20 years, along with hand-drawn spreadsheets documenting what gifts she had given everyone every year.
Then there are the notebooks, her journals or diaries or whatever you would call them. Now understand, I'm a compulsive journaler, too. I have a collection of notebooks going back fifty+ years that are filled to overflowing with astute observations about the nature of life, and plenty of whining. Nancy's? Not so much, at least not so far. She, like her father before her, jotted down events, weather, prices, destinations and who she saw during the day. She was not given to reflection about her own or other people's feelings, did not process her place in the world, neither opined nor suggested solutions to the problems of public life.
Still, there are several spiral notebooks and as I read them, I'm reminded of so many ordinary days that have slipped from memory. I'm grateful for her note-taking on the days of her life. She only started writing after retirement; the really juicy stuff came before and went discreetly unrecorded. But these pages are what matter to me now, the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life.
Well. Now I've gone and done it. I wrote a blog for the first time in a couple of months. I've written nothing but an obituary for quite awhile, and wondered if my writing days were over.
Spring has sprung. Warmth returns. I'm shaking off the darkness of winter's night and coming back to life as well.
