You can do this, you know you can, yes, breathe, in and out…
He was so handsome in his dress blues. His hat, called a lid, on his chest along with the white gloves. His sword at his side. My mother said, “Still my handsome Marine.”
An officer and a gentleman to the end.
I couldn’t touch him there in the casket. I just couldn’t. That other night, he was cold when I began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Cold. So wrong for him to feel that way. I realized and quit. Knowing it hopeless.
My father was always warm, his hugs enveloping me and spreading that warmth until it engulfed us both. He loved me. I him.
And he died.
Suddenly. It wasn’t expected. We didn’t see it coming. He was warm and breathing and then he was cold and still lying on the bathroom floor, lying in the casket in his dress blues. Hat, gloves, and sword. And medals. His medals a mess – we didn’t know how to arrange them. His Marine friend was too overcome with grief to do it for us. So they weren’t even pinned on. They were just sitting there. Not quite a jumble, but it was as wrong as his death.
Which was also right. He went out the way he wanted to. No lingering illness. No hospital. Fine and then dead.
Dead.
My daddy is dead.
I remember the next morning lying on my bed trying to escape the pain. Trying not to think and finally just sinking into it. Letting the hot burning grief fill me. All his warmth was now a blaze of sadness. Yes, a blaze. Great leaps of flame touching every part of me. The little girl who sat on his lap. The teenager who rolled her eyes. The bride who took his arm and walked down the aisle. The new mother who handed him his grandson. The daughter standing by his coffin unwilling to feel that cold again.
All that pain.
Wrapped up tidy for the funeral in dress blues.
An adagio of emotion. Still, quiet, cold building to the flames and then trailing off. Dying. Cold…. A memory.
I live in a converted barn. When we first started working on it, I learned about supporting walls. These are walls you can’t knock down unless you put a beam in, and walls you can’t move. And walls that need a lot of structural support.
We had a few. They were the bane of my existence. There were walls where I didn’t want them to be. Coming up with a floor plan was daunting.
Finally, I had a Eurkea! Moment. I found the floor plan that worked for everything I wanted except one thing.
The main entrance to my house, the front door, opened into my kitchen.
The following I wrote in August of 2009. I’m not working in the group home any longer. Two jobs are kind of rough. If I was too old at 50, I’m certainly too old at 63. But not much else has changed including my need for extra cash. Daily I am bombarded with events that interrupt my attempts at routine. I thought we were close just before COVID. Oh, how the gods must have laughed. At my expense, mind you.
My life got even crazier. Much crazier. And then there was the decade of death and grief. These days I am not at peace. There is much turmoil that I am trying to tame with routine. There are some indications that it’s working. I’ve been positively cheerful. If you knew what I knew about the things that matter to me, you’d realize how big…REALLY BIG…that is.
So In 2009, I also wrote about how much I enjoy the start of a new school year and the return to routine. Hah! But once again, I’m going to try. I’ve already been derailed, but we’ll try again tomorrow. It’s kind of dicey. I already know my morning routine is blown all to hell.
So enjoy the following and reflect on how naive I was. It was like I taunted the universe and she answered with “Well. Sweetie. Here ya go” and let loose the past thirteen years. God forbid, I look back at this post in thirteen years and marvel at how naive I was. Please no.
I’m working part-time at a group home for teenagers. The kids are there because of stuff they did or because of stuff done to them. In most cases, though certainly not all, these kids have lived a life of routine that does not have a discernable pattern – or in other words – no routine.
For years, I viewed the concept of routine as a Great Evil to avoid at all cost. I was, and perhaps still am, convinced that routine stunts creativity and turns us into automatons. But more on that later.
Anyone who has been charged with the responsibility of taking care of a three-year-old understands the importance of routine in a child’s life. Toddlers without a routine are some of the most miserable beings on the planet. More importantly, they know this. If you change a toddler’s routine for any reason, in most cases (aside from holidays, vacations, etc.), the toddler will scream blue-bloody murder.
When Chef Boy R’ Mine was that age, any deviation from the weekly routine turned him into a hyperactive monster prone to tears, rage, and publicly embarrassing behavior. Being sufficiently enlightened, knowledgeable about child development, and having examined all of my parents’ shortcomings as parents, I, like nearly every other parent, was convinced that my child would always be happy and well-adjusted. It’s such a rude awakening when enlightenment, knowledge, and introspection do not, in fact, make a damn bit of difference as to whether or not the child is going to have a tantrum at the Kroger.
Anyway.
The older the boy got and the older I got, the more I realized that routine is not just important to toddlers, it’s important to everyone. It’s not the blanket evil once believed to be true.
My first day of school.
The beginning of the school year was always a time of relief and rejoicing. Staples used to run a commercial with a happy, frolicking father tossing school supplies into the basket with great glee. His two disgruntled children watch. I laughed every time I saw it and said Amen! I thoughtfully provided the commercial at the beginning of this post.
The start of school signaled a return to routine. After a couple of months of flexible bedtimes, erratic meals, impromptu outings, and any number of unscheduled activities, we were all worn out from too much deviation.
Now, of course, school brought its own challenges. Still, there was a carved-in-stone routine that was only interrupted by Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Memorial Day. Those interludes provided needed respite from the grind, but like the first day of school in August, I always looked forward to January 2nd when the holidays were officially over and we could get back to the routine.
At the group home, the first thing we do is put these kids on a schedule. They have standard mealtimes, standard bedtimes, and a daily rhythm that doesn’t vary too wildly. They chafe at first, but like toddlers, they come to both expect it and need it. The minute something gets off-kilter, they get hyperactive and there are tears, rage, and the occasional tantrum. I’m learning that routine is good.
As the years went by and I began noticing how much I looked forward to the first day of school (and January 2nd), I realized that routine was important in my life too. While it does inhibit my creativity and does, to some extent, turn me into an automaton, the emotional equilibrium that routine provides does mitigate the downside. For the most part.
Several years ago, I became disgusted with my routine and made some sweeping life changes. I do not regret this.
Can you see John’s head?
However, these sweeping changes punctuated by some disasters of varying importance have left me, metaphorically, in the cereal aisle at Kroger having a tantrum. Everything is in flux and while I can envision the goal line, I cannot see it. (I can’t believe I’m using a sports metaphor, but there you have it.) I had a plan and I have goals, but I don’t see the plan being executed for another 5 to 7 years, which means attaining the goals will take even longer. I have resisted looking that truth in the eye.
I am emotionally exhausted and prone to rage and tantrums. I am simply tired of not knowing what I can expect from the next day, the next month, or the next year. I’m fond, perhaps too fond, of quoting John Lennon’s “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” It’s good to have goals, but that doesn’t preclude having a routine or abandoning a plan that can’t be executed under the circumstances. Muttering “This too shall pass” has been comforting. It may very well be passing, but the movement is so slow as to be imperceptible.
I have chafed at the routine that is trying to emerge because it is in direct opposition to my goals and expectations. I had a major setback yesterday. I’m still reeling. I do know that the chafing, the grumpiness, the rage, and the tantrums have not changed one damn thing. I need to embrace the nascent routine and accept my New Normal.
So. My task for the day is to try and fine-tune the routine that I think circumstances are dictating; and tweak it enough to insure I don’t become a bitter, old woman whose creativity is limited to seeing what happens when she substitutes Campbell’s Cream of Celery soup for the Cream of Mushroom in the tuna casserole.
The New Normal I’m trying to talk myself into embracing is so far outside my realm of experience (and not in a good way) that figuring out how to turn it into something that’s going to work for me is daunting. I do know that viewing it as temporary is not working. For years now, I’ve hung onto arbitrary timeframes uttered by doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs that have proved to be complete fiction. There is no goal line in sight. (Damn it, did it again.)
So, channeling the sentiments of many sages, the goal is to be right here, right now with a routine, day in and day out, that doesn’t ignore the future, but doesn’t treat the now as an aberration. The now is the future. I am not qualified to discuss the high-level physics that proves this true. You’ll have to trust me.
And this all seems much grimmer and whiny than is my intention. I’m more at peace right now than I have been. Years ago when the New Normal began, I would have told you I couldn’t have gotten to this day without losing my mind. While my mental health has ups and downs, I have not worn a strait jacket or been prescribed haloperidol. While I’m not dancing around singing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” I am also not railing at the universe.
Now then. If you’ll excuse me, I have a set of chores that I’ve previously allotted 9 hours to, but which the New Normal dictates must be done in 45 minutes. I need to get cracking.
I want to think again of nothing. There must have been a time my brain wasn’t churning, churning, churning. The incessant monkey mind silenced. But it’s probably a pipe dream. I read recently, that even in the womb we dream. If we dream, we must think. But about what? Surely not the things I think about all the time. Surely not. Please. All that thinking just wears me out.
I want to think again of recess – that wonderful part of our day when we left it all in the classroom and went outside to the bright sun. I usually played jacks. When we came back in, the teacher would read aloud from a chapter book. What glorious days were those.
I want to think again of the latest book I’ve read. To ponder where the story is going and imagine the characters. I want to be lost in that scenery, invested in those lives, living vicariously through both protagonists and villains. If one is too busy to read, one is too busy.
I want to think again of the sounds of the forest and the garden. I want to sit in my garden, close my eyes, and just listen to the wind rustling through tree leaves, the sound of animals scurrying here and there in the forest, and hear the heart-pulling yet peaceful call of the mourning dove. Who is she mourning? What is she mourning? Does she too want to think of what was?
I want to think again of endless possibilities of what I might be when I grow up. All the possible pearls one might pull out of the oyster. The curiosity about where life might lead me. I’ve been led and there aren’t a lot of years ahead of me. I think of the inevitable things.
I want to think again of nothing. Blissful, peaceful nothing. Still and quiet. Feel the wind on my skin and sound of mourning doves and the scent of late-blooming roses. I want to close my eyes so I see nothing—nothing that needs to be done or fixed or some other unpleasant chore.
Nothing. I want to think again of nothing.
A riff on the poem Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver
W. Va. Fur and Root 