29th August, 2018 Wednesday
Migrate to a Blog I am not sure how to use but, hey, we’ll try.
I dreamt last night the apartment we had to be in was spectered shall we say. Something dark lived in its space. Bothered some of us but not others. I was aware of it and watchful but not invested in the fear knowing I wouldn’t be there long. It was a dingy place. Old and unloved. Cracked and peeling and musty.
I dreamt about visiting a courtroom with a friend who knew the Judge. An amiable fellow, he saw us and stopped the proceedings, inviting us to sit in a two seater benched chair with a built in desk like the antique school chairs except for two. He liked my friend. They had history. The dream drifted to a phone call he made to her asking her to go pubbing which he and his cronies were want to do. No agenda towards her, just fun. He and she had lots of light.
I dreamt a woman dancing on tiptoes across rocks at the edge of the sea. I marveled at her balance and worried for her safety.
I dreamt my daughter coming to tell us she had to bicycle to Las Vegas for the day. It would be a long long day on bicycle. And then we see her on a motorcycle racing out of town followed by her friend with a baby on another motorcycle. The baby was loose hanging over the back of the seat behind her mother with sofa cushions strapped around as some kind of safety buffer for the child. Later, we hear my daughter has not come back. Disappeared she has.
So yes, a year ago yesterday I arrived at the house. It was no small feat to migrate me and the dogs, a cat and a bird the two hundred miles to the house whose fence was nowhere near finished. Me in a little car with the dachshunds and the bird and several bits of supplies. My husband in the van with the Deerhounds. And a dear dear dear friend who had bred and shown the Wizard in her van with the other Saluki and the rest of the shit we needed to weather the camping out time until the rest of the house arrived.
We trailed down here and arrived late afternoon. Introduced the stunned dogs to their new, unpacked the cars, wandered the house pulling up drawn shades and opening windows to the Gorge’s breezes…
Almost halfway home…
You see I still had to sell the other house which couldn’t be on the market till the animals moved out. So the three months of summer last year had been spent preparing one house to sell while the other perched precariously on the promise of a loan which eventually didn’t come through at the last. A week of extension and I moved a mountain with the aid of money brains and asked for a float from the Sellers and Voila!!! The Zing of huge amounts through the ether and it closed. I was in it now.
I loved my realtor and I hate the real estate marketing culture about houses need to be “staged” in order to pass show muster. Oh my God, these people who get paid for answering phones and forwarding stats as your house sits and sits…Jesus. Well, its ok. It all worked the way it did and its done and as I type the tale I start to sweat…not fun.
So that first night a year ago had an evening of takeout, wine, assembling bird homes and perches and saying an unknowing farewell to a phase of friendship I had no idea at the time I was waving good bye to. Two hundred miles is a long way to go to spend an afternoon with a friend. I miss her and those afternoons.
I climbed the stairs to bed with my husband who perched hours earlier in the roost that is the bedroom in the top of this treehouse.
Morning and the rush of how do we do this. Where do dogs go out and how to stop them peeing on the blond lawn they have translated the living room rug to be. They have only known concrete floors in all their dens. This soft fluffy stuff was fun, like lawn. Lying on it felt lovely and yes, the pee didn’t splatter or spread, like lawn. Why go out, Mom? Jesus. How many housebreaking years did they all carry from me and they resort to this? That rug has got to go. Stop peeing, PLEASE!!!
The rug went three months ago. Concrete poured and skimmed by men who like to ski and sail, volcano or river, they adapt. Its terra cotta, this new floor which is sourcing change for paint on walls but we will get there.
Morning one year ago, the first morning in this new adventure, my husband sits on the riverside of bed, massive shoulders just a little hunched. Too quiet. I stop. He is not needy, this man. I love that and worry he does not need when he should. Something about this, though. I sit. He says right out, “My mother died last night.”
In the chaos of the days before of packing up the crap for house camping, I had finally moved something in my now naked office space I find as I type the memory of which is stunningly vivid in the grief of missing it. I loved it so. Wow, that was quite the bullet of a drift…
In the packing chaos, falls to the floor a photo. It is one taken at the party my husband gave his family years before The Ranch. There on my floor, stored for all those many years somewhere I meant to sort but hadn’t, is my Mama, so harshly missed in my first year of grieving her, smiling up at me so very pleased. She is grouped with his Mama and Papa and their three grandsons and my youngest. Its the Grands shot of a Family Gathering. And there they all were, as I shed one shell in hopes of finding purchase in another for God knows what reason, shining up at me from that early day so long ago on the Ranch.
I had thought it was my Mama come to wave at me. Wish me on. Fairwinds, good girl. Keep on. It will all work out. And indeed it was. But she had another with her.
His Mama passed within a day of that photo flying out in front of me. She had long been in the twilight they call Alzheimer’s. I can imagine that for those in that place they are drifting far before their mortal tether breaks. But hey, what the fuck do I know.
I know my dogs love me. As I weepily type, they have all come to ask, “You OK? My heart feels this sorrow with you. Lets wag it away.” The dachshunds wiggle and scratch at me. The Deerhounds barrel over and lean smiling while I brace. The Zoi brings her ball and makes me laugh. And the Wizard, he just loves me. Always, he is on guard for my heart, his heart between me and whatever comes. “I got you.”
Ta with green tea.
Tea With Me 