Where's Wendy?

I took a couple of pictures of Halloween decorated houses today. This reminded me I need to get my tree out and put the Halloween ornaments on it. As usual, this also made me think about Wendy. Wendy the Windsock Ghost is (was) a ghost I made out of plastic canvas many years ago. She was about 8" high and had three sides stitched together to make a nice little ghost. She was stitched, since she's a ghost, with all white yarn. That was a LOT of white yarn and a lot of tedious stitching. I liked Wendy though and she was worth the work.

Sadly she disappeared one year and I haven't found her since. I don't know where good ghosts go but I hope that's where she went. I've thought about making another Wendy but it just doesn't seem right - she was one of a kind.

Anyway. . . that's my sad Halloween remembrance! This weekend I'll post some pictures of my tree. For now you can see the pictures I took today. They were both more impressive "in person."

Driving, singing, and halfway thinking

I drove to Oakland on Saturday to visit my Dad. It was about four hours total in the car so it was a lot of driving and plenty of time for singing and thinking.

I like to listen to music while I'm driving. I have a CD player but a few years ago a CD got stuck in it and I've never been able to get it out. It's a Johnny Cash CD and for quite a while it would play so it was ok. About a year ago it quit playing and now it's just stuck. It doesn't bother me much - I just listen to the radio. Usually I listen to the Eagle 96.9, Sacramento's classic rock station! But when I'm driving to the Bay Area I lose the signal after awhile and only get static. I haven't found a good Bay Area station to listen to so this means I'm on my own for music.

If you've heard me sing, you understand why I only do it under a certain circumstances: 1) alone in the car, 2) with my cats and 3) to annoy someone. I can only remember an approximate tune and words for a some songs so my repertoire is limited.

I started where I usually start with "I'd Rather Be Blue Over You" and then progressed to "When the Saints Come Marching In." A childhood spent in church has provided me with a fair number of hymns I can sing, so I'll go through those and then onto a few Christmas songs. There are some Frank Sinatra songs I can sing: "I've Got a Crush on You" and "I've Got You Under My Skin." The song I'm best at, in my opinion, is called "Rise and Shine." It's a kids song that my daughter learned when she was young and I actually think I sound halfway normal when I sing it! It's kind of catchy and is fun to sing.

Driving is kind of like meditation I've decided. It's easy to slip into a space where you aren't really thinking but you are. I guess that makes sense. Anyway that's what I do. I've come up with some amazing ideas while driving!

Saturday I was thinking about home. When I go to the Bay Area it's going home and despite eight years in Sacramento, part of me still belongs there. Especially in Castro Valley. I lived there at different times throughout my life - the last time before moving to Sacramento was for 27 years. It's still home to me. I stopped in Castro Valley to get gas and drove past my old place. It looked the same but a lot of other places have changed.

Anyway I spent the trip back thinking about home and what it means. My mother died in 1999 and part of me has not had a home since. To me, home is about belonging and feeling safe and loving people and being loved. Without my mother, some parts of me will never have a home.

Right now it's just me and my cats but that's home. When I open the door and they are sitting looking up at me I feel happy even if it's been a bad day. When my daughter and her boyfriend visit it feels like home. They are, in most ways, my closest family. I can relax and be comfortable and enjoy having people around that don't expect anything from me. When I visit my Dad it's home in a different way. He'll be 83 this month but he still makes me feel safe.

When I drove past my old apartment I felt like I could turn into the driveway and I'd be home. I lived there for 25 years. I have memories there I wouldn't give up for anything. And some I'd like to give up but can't. I spent the drive back to Sacramento thinking about home and being homesick and wondering where I belonged. When I turned into my driveway, I knew where I belonged: I was home and my cats were waiting inside and it's good.

Here's some pictures of my drive back through the Altamont Pass. There was an accident and traffic was stopped. It took about 30 minutes to go 2-3 miles.  I like going through the Altamont Pass because I like looking at the wind turbines. I had plenty of time to look on Saturday!

Welcome Back

It's been a long time! I've decided that I'd like to start keeping my blog again. I'm sure people have been waiting with barely concealed patience for this day. Well at least I haven't lost my sarcastic sense of humor.

There have been a lot of changes since my last post. I've moved twice, started a new job, lost some people (not through death) I didn't want to lose, lost some people (again, not death) I did want to lose (at least in retrospect), found some people that I wish I hadn't and found other people that I'm very glad to have found. I turned, I can hardly bear to say it, 60 in July. My cats turned 13 in August. They are doing pretty well. Pippin was diagnosed with kidney disease in 2014. His kidney values go down a bit each visit (every six months) but he is in good health and I hope that it will continue to progress slowly. As I tell him frequently, he is the love of my life and I just can't imagine being without him. Mellifera is healthy and grouchy but mostly sweet.

The outside changes are not as important as the inside ones (except when I look in the mirror). I have found that, along with Winnie the Pooh, I am braver than I believed and stronger than I seemed. And, while I may be stronger than I thought, I'm also vulnerable in ways I hadn't realized.

I feel how Frodo Baggins must have felt when he said: "How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold."

I'm on the edge of  creating a new life - one that I want - not one I'm trying to live for other people.  It's scary. There are many days when I want to crawl under the covers and never come out. Mostly I don't though.  Soooo.... join me as I begin a new journey!

Lest you've forgotten, or never knew, what my cats look like, here they are!

Happy Birthday Jill!

Sorry to make you all click but Facebook wouldn't let me upload this video!

I made this video to celebrate Jill's 37th birthday. It's hard to believe she's really that old. Jill is someone who will truly always be forever young.

I think (and I'm only a little biased), that she is an amazing person. Jill believes in herself and accepts herself and other people the way they are. She has always gone her own way and not worried what the rest of the world thought. It's a quality about her that I envy and am in awe of.

I've learned a lot being Jill's mother. I learned that I liked Indian food and that some weeds are really beautiful plants and I shouldn't pull them up. I've learned tolerance, acceptance and that just because you give birth to someone, they won't always listen to you! It hasn't always been easy but I wouldn't change a minute of the past 37 years.

Happy Birthday!

Toward the Solstice

The thirtieth of November.
Snow is starting to fall.
A peculiar silence is spreading
over the fields, the maple grove.
It is the thirtieth of May,
rain pours on ancient bushes, runs
down the youngest blade of grass.
I am trying to hold in one steady glance
all the parts of my life.
A spring torrent races
on this old slanting roof,
the slanted field below
thickens with winter's first whiteness.
Thistles dried to sticks in last year's wind
stand nakedly in the green,
stand sullenly in the slowly whitening field.

My brain glows
more violently, more avidly
the quieter, the thicker
the quilt of crystals settles,
the louder, more relentlessly
the torrent beats itself out
on the old boards and shingles.
It is the thirtieth of May,
the thirtieth of November,
a beginning or an end,
we are moving into the solstice
and there is so much here
I still do not understand.
If I could make sense of how
my life is still tangled
with dead weeds, thistles,
enormous burdocks, burdens
slowly shifting under
this first fall of snow,
beaten by this early, racking rain
calling all new life to declare itself strong
or die,

if I could know
in what language to address
the spirits that claim a place
beneath these low and simple ceilings,
tenants that neither speak nor stir
yet dwell in mute insistence
till I can feel utterly ghosted in this house.

If history is a spider-thread
spun over and over though brushed away
it seems I might some twilight
or dawn in the hushed country light
discern its grayness stretching
from molding or doorframe, out
into the empty dooryard
and following it climb
the path into the pinewoods,
tracing from tree to tree
in the failing light, in the slowly
lucidifying day
its constant, purposive trail,
til I reach whatever cellar hole
filling with snowflakes or lichen,
whatever fallen shack
or unremembered clearing
I am meant to have found
and there, under the first or last
star, trusting to instinct
the words would come to mind
I have failed or forgotten to say
year after year, winter
after summer, the right rune
to ease the hold of the past
upon the rest of my life
and ease my hold on the past.

If some rite of separation
is still unaccomplished
between myself and the long-gone
tenants of this house,
between myself and my childhood,
and the childhood of my children,
it is I who have neglected
to perform the needed acts,
set water in corners, light and eucalyptus
in front of mirrors,
or merely pause and listen
to my own pulse vibrating
lightly as falling snow,
relentlessly as the rainstorm,
and hear what it has been saying.
It seems I am still waiting
for them to make some clear demand
some articulate sound or gesture,
for release to come from anywhere
but from inside myself.

A decade of cutting away
dead flesh, cauterizing
old scars ripped open over and over
and still it is not enough.
A decade of performing
the loving humdrum acts
of attention to this house
transplanting lilac suckers,
washing panes, scrubbing
wood-smoke from splitting paint,
sweeping stairs, brushing the thread
of the spider aside,
and so much yet undone,
a woman's work, the solstice nearing,
and my hand still suspended
as if above a letter
I long and dread to close.

  by Adrienne Rich

This is pretty cool!

I was driving down the street this morning minding my own business and this is what I saw!

Silent Sunday