Cheers, The Family Weekend Edition

Jun28

So, I spent the weekend with my family. And it was good as it always is. I love to roll down that road. See Papa’s airmail box way up high. And the gate, always left open when I’m coming. Entering the “Crawford Compound” and feeling instantly like I’m living inside a hug, before I even see anybody. Not being hugged, mind you. No. Living in a hug. I love it there. As I posted on Facebook, just rolling up the drive feels like the theme song from Cheers. Everybody knows my name, and they’re always glad I came.

This weekend, The DJ and I let our technogeek shine. He has the cellphone I’ve been looking at, and I had him show it to me, and he let me play with it. It certainly lives up to the name That One and I have given it. The DJ also showed me some things my crackberry would do that I didn’t know about, so that was cool too. I had been using snaptu to look at feeds and facebook, but that little internet icon on my phone is actual true internet, not just a lame static website reader. Sweet! OTOH, I will soon be shopping for a new holder and pimpouts and they won’t be iphone accessories, but stuff for the Samsung Moment. I’ll be getting it as soon as we can find the Evo in stock for That One.

I also started my collection of hand photos. Umm, ya’ll, it’s hard to get a good hand shot! I hadn’t counted on the fact that hands hang at exactly crotch level when standing, and generally rest in the lap when sitting. So………it’s going to be interesting collecting these pictures without looking like a total perv. I got four shots, I think, and I explained a lot more times that that what I was trying to do and why. Thankfully, some of the folks read my blog as it comes across facebook, so it didn’t shock them too badly, LOL!

And! We planned a trip for us cousins later this summer. We are going to Carowinds together in August and all of us are very excited!

And! Bay-bay! We have another new one, just 9 weeks old. Still soft and squishy. I really enjoyed holding and loving on him. I particularly enjoyed passing him back the moment he got the least little bit fretful. Muhahahahaha! I also giggled on the inside when his parents had to eat in shifts. Not that I let them know it, but I’ve btdt for 22 years now, so I think I’ve served enough time at it to giggle at them, don’t you?

On a more intense personal note, The DJ and I sat up talking until 3:30 am Sunday morning. We were talking about now and then and memory and how it functions. As he would talk about stuff he remembered, it would jog things for me that I didn’t think I had in there. I know now why a grilled cheese sandwich makes me feel loved—it started with cheese toast from Grandma’s toaster oven. I know I probably won’t ever remember a whole lot, and I can live with that. But I plan to dig until I have as many happy memories in my repertoire as bad ones. It won’t take long, LOL, since I have about 10 now altogether, but once I have more happy ones, I can choose which ones to play. Less Drama and trauma, more laughing and loving.

Ok, I think that’s a wrap. It was a jammed 22.5 hours.

An Ode to Patrick Swayze

Jun25

Dear Patrick Swayze,

I know you are dead and all, but here is the fan letter I would have written if I thought you actually read them yourself. You are so amazing. I loved every one of your movies. Yes, I’ve seen them all. From the way you held Baby in Dirty Dancing to the way you exacted justice in Next of Kin to the very obvious love you had for your wife in Last Dance, you are the bomb.

Also, unbearably HAWT. Just sayin’ From my teens to my late thirties, you rocked my socks. You taught me that nobody puts Baby in a corner and that pain don’t hurt. Also how to rob banks and do a disappearing wipe-out.

I still sigh every time I see your picture, and I still smile every time I watch you move with that cat-like grace. If I had the money, I’d put multiple big screens on assorted tv stands and watch you in stereo.

Love,
Cass

April 11-15 Some More Pictures and Hard Stuff

May25

So here I am again, finally. Not yet ready really to talk, but having reached the point where I probably need to. It has been so long since I took some of these pictures that I will probably have a hard time remembering the significance of a lot of them. Whatever the case, it is time for stories to be told.

April 11 The End There is no picture for April 11. I slept in a bit on this Sunday morning, and then I called Mama and told her I was ready to head to the hospital, did she need me to look after her dog on the way. And this time, she told me not to come. Quite a difference from the previous Sunday, when she had called me to hurry. The family had gathered around and they were about to take the breathing mask off of Granny. I think it ended up that I was one of maybe 5 family members not there. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. I guess I am upset that maybe some think I didn’t care enough to be there. But then it also seems pretty ghoulish to think that some 20-30 people were there to watch someone die. I mean, where is the peace to that? HOW DO YOU EVEN DIE LIKE THAT? Thinking about it turns my stomach.

Granny was my last living grandparent, and it was on this day that I started crying. Daily. For quite awhile. Which we will get to eventually.

April 12 Lunch This is a hamburger, and I think it came from Chili’s, but I am not sure. I know it had fried onions on it and it was very good. And on this day, I worked and I cried and I picked clothes for the wake with my mother’s help.

April 13 Visitation Excuse me. I have to go smoke before we talk about this. And also get more coffee.

This is a picture of a plant that was at the funeral home. Behind the plant, you can see the “beautiful people” who compose my family. I worked this day from 9-5:30 and then I headed to the funeral home for the visitation that started at 6. The night before, as I mentioned, I had picked out my clothes, which had to adapt from work to wake because of the time issue. And….as I was trying to figure out something suitable, Mama asked me if I was planning to stand with the family. Because, you know, it might not look right, them all standing there, having had time to make themselves socially presentable, and I had to pretty much wear what I wore to work, with the exception of changing my shirt and shoes.

I think I have probably mentioned before that I have always felt isolated by this step-family of mine, tolerated, but never enjoyed and loved. Not part of them, not accepted, the short, dark ugly duckling in a group of tall, blonde swans. But until this night, I had never felt like my appearance embarrassed my mother as well. I had never felt excluded by her. And so, I spent this evening sitting on a couch there in the visitation room, lying to everyone about how I wasn’t up there with my family because my feet hurt because I had been standing up all day and feeling so unloved and unwanted and unworthy. And then I went to back to Granny’s for a bit and then I went home and cried some more.

And I knew again that my decision to love and accept my kids no matter what weird clothes they choose or what crazy thing they do to their hair was the right one for me.

April 14 The funeral
This is the dress and sweater I wore to Granny’s funeral. I had That One help me pick my clothes via pic text. Golly gee, I do love technology. And I wept through the entire service. And yeah, the person who “lost it” during the springtime song, that was me.

April 15 Azaleas
These are from my own yard, blooming on bushes Grandmother gave to me when I moved in here.

April 1-April 5 More Various Pictures

Apr28

So, I did some more things.

April 1 Looks like I went to Taco Bell for lunch on the 1st. Well, actually, my coworker went, and we ate in the breakroom, but whatever.

April 2 On the second, I went to the hospital right after work to see Granny, and realized I hadn’t eaten all day. A tasteless chicken sandwich and tasteless strawberry shortcake was dinner. I usually like the shortcake from here, but…….yeah, no. Sigh. Not this night.

April 3 I went to ACMoore on my lunch to look for yarn for That One’s mom and sister. They want hats. HA! I didn’t find what they wanted, but I scored several balls of each of these for myself at just $1.99 each. Yay me! And I still get to go to another yarn store looking for their stuff. Yay me again.

April 4 No picture. Early morning “you need to come to the hospital” call instead. So I did.

April 5 Picture I took in the bathroom of work to replace the one I had taken outside that That One declared “too frowny”. You can tell by the white shirt that I was in the pharmacy instead of using my box cutter to open garden shop freight.

Art-March 15

Mar28

On this Monday, I did leaf rubbings with my scouts. It was a quick and fun activity, but it got me to thinking about art. I have always been so very envious of people who can manipulate sticks to make pictures on paper. It’s just not something I am good at. Looking at this picture reminds me of the one passable piece I have ever done. It was in middle school, and I drew a plant on poster sized paper in chalks. The art teacher sealed it with hair spray, and it is still rolled up in my old closet at Mama’s. I can see it now in my mind’s eye.

Vigil-March 13

Mar28

On the 13th, I sat vigil with my cousin’s best friend of 16 years. I had meant to spend the day playing games with my children, and was setting up the Scrabble board when Michael came in and told me he couldn’t get a response from Rocky. And so I went into my neighbor’s yard where he was, and there I sat, unable to do anything except be there.

Day 58 of Project 365 Feb 27 Knitting at the Movies

Mar5

So, this was my view late on the 27th: knitting on the Clapotis, chatting with Ang. and watching a movie. I think it was Enemy at the Gates.

Now, I watched E@tG because That One recommended it to me. Well, recommended is not exactly the right word. What he actually said was “if you want to see inside my head, watch E@tG and Apocolypse Now.” Because I want to understand his ticking, I said I would, and I put them in my Blockbuster Queue. I’ve been waiting months for them to become available and will likely have to borrow Apocolypse from him if I ever hope to see it.

Now, this is not a “pleasant” movie. It is a brutal and gruesome movie. In fact, both of these are probably ones I’d rather just read the books for. But, then I would not have seen what he saw, only for real. The folks in his “movie” never get up and walk away after the director yells “cut”.

Most of you know I am a veteran. That is, I served, during peace time, and mostly in the reserves. Getting to know an actual combat veteran, it gives me a totally different sense of appreciation for what these folks have truly done for us. Every Veteran’s Day, people say stuff about thanking a veteran, and the other 364 days a year, we tend to forget them. That’s a shame, because combat vets, they carry it with them forever. Forever. It’s never truly over for them, because you can’t unsee a thing, can’t get a do-over.

One of the things that most disgusts me about our country is the way we handle vets. We teach and train them to kill and destroy and then, once they have served our purposes, we turn them loose to try to live normal lives, with a set of life skills that they are then forbidden to employ. We ought to be ashamed. And if I ever get around to being politically active, this will be my issue.

And while I am at it, there ought to be some kind of something for folks who purpose to be life partners with combat vets. Writing this post has made me realize some things. My first husband was a combat vet. Looking back now, I can see that part of his “craziness” was due to that. The thing was, he never trusted me enough to talk about his experiences very much, so I had no idea what was going on in his head. I don’t know if that was because it was fresher for him, or what. Nor do I think it would have made much difference in the eventual dissolution of our marriage. I was much younger and much less patient, way more ignorant and certainly unable to see beyond the end of my own nose. In retrospect, I probably pushed a lot of buttons for him, unintentionally.

So here’s what I have learned:
1) it’s not about you. It’s about a nightmare, lived once in life and over and over again in dreams.
2) it’s not about you, you didn’t do it, and you can’t change it.
3) when he talks, listen. Just shut up and listen. Nod and murmur occasionally to let him know you are still there, but be quiet.
4) when he shuts up, respect that.

Come to think about it, that’s pretty good advice for anybody who thinks they love anybody to follow. We all have our demons, now don’t we?

Oh yeah, one more thing: be careful touching a sleeping man, it can get you hurt.

Day 28 of Project 365

Feb3

On this day, I washed dishes. Now, that’s something I do with some frequency, but I took a picture of it so I could tell you a story.

Well, two stories, the first of which is fairly boring. My dishwasher is broken AGAIN, and so we are doing dishes by hand. All the kids hate dishes, but none of them mind cooking, and they dislike the other kitchen chores less than they hate dishes. So, I don’t cook anymore, but I do all the dishes. I divided the eight kids into four teams, and one team cooks each night, and the other three take care of the miscellaneous kitchen tasks. The thing is, I don’t mind doing the dishes. I just mind doing the dishes and the cooking and the sweeping and the clearing and the….. yeah, you get the idea. I find standing there at the sink with my hands doing a job that my mind doesn’t need to be involved in to be a great time for reflection, and a good way to wind down from the day, so the system works for all of us. It was a moment of sheer genius, I tell ya!

Ok, onto the other story. You will note that my right hand appears in that picture, and that on my ring finger is something that looks suspiciously like a wedding band. That’s because it is a wedding band. The engagement ring is there, too. These are Grandmother’s rings, and some two years after she died, I told my mother I was ready for them. I had to tell her about eight times before she believed me, and even then I think it was because That One was standing behind me and confirmed it.

Now, this is not the first time I have owned these rings. I had asked her for them many years ago, while she was still healthy and active, and she agreed immediately that I could have them when she was no longer needing them. And then, after she went into the nursing home, but was still leaving to visit us now and again, she gave them to me, because they no longer fit her. My uncle asked for them back so he could have them resized for her, and I handed them over without hesitation, and she wore them for a couple more years. After she died, though, the rings came off and Mama kept them for me.

I calculated a couple weeks ago, that Grandmother wore these rings while she washed dishes for about 55 years. And now I wear them, and I wash dishes in them, and so the legacy of love continues. I think roughly the same thoughts whenever I work on my flowerbeds or sew or make fried chicken. I want to be the kind of woman she was. Oh yes, I do.

She had a way of smiling at you when you walked into a room that made you think she’d just been waiting for you to show up to make her day complete. A big huge smile, and she continued to do that until very near the end of her life, even after she no longer recognized people for who they were. (Thankfully, that stage was intermittent, and didn’t last very long for her, but she often thought I was my mother near the end. I could tell by the things she said.) Lately, I’ve been told by my bffs and my kids that when I am not smiling, I look angry, no matter what my actual mood is, so I’m practicing smiling a lot more, letting the people I love now it with my face, and not just my words and deeds.

Yes, I miss her still. No one has ever loved me like my grandparents did. I think……of all the memories I have lost, it is not being able to remember more of them that troubles me most. I want to be able to remember being loved like that. It hardly seems fair to be able to remember the absolutely shitty things in my life (and excuse my language, but there is no other word for it) and to not be able to remember that.

Midlife Musings

Reflections on life from 50-something

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