Joyful and Sacred

Christmas is chocolate

Christmas is warm fuzzy blankets

Christmas is families

Celebrating the birth of the Christchild

Poignant and heart-warming

is sipping soup

with my Souptown Siblings

Lynn (87), Jerry (81), Carol (78), Jeanette (83), Verla (73)

Spouses and nieces.

Lana Esplin, Amy Jayne Hart, Nellie Doornbos, Juanita Esplin (83) DeRay Hugh (85)

December 21, 2019

Fruit Heights Utah

Besides our two older sisters
who have moved to the great beyond,
only sibling missing is DeLoy,
who lives in California and takes care
of his invalid wife, Grace.
Grace died last Friday (January 31);
her funeral is this Friday (February 7.
When we got the news of Grace's death,
Ed observed all evening not saying a word
as we talked about it.
After everyone left, he said:
"I love Uncle DeLoy, Mom.
I'll have to tell them at PARC that my aunt died today. 
She will be missed. 
She doesn't have to suffer anymore. 
I love Uncle DeLoy, Mom."
He told everyone at church too.

Each Enchanted Morning

I never remember a winter when we have awakened

so many mornings to a soft layer of freshly-fallen snow

on the lawns, sidewalks, trees and bushes.

Four or five days in a row sometimes

we wake up to such exquisiteness

Clean. Fresh. Splendor.

Enchantment for the soul.

From our bedroom window

 Our Mailbox

After the driveway and sidewalk had been cleaned once.

  

Legacy

Every since I got my death warrant,

I have wondered what noble legacy I will leave.

Hard as I try,

I cannot think of one single thing.

In fact, it only served to remind me of where I have failed.

Very discouraging.

Then

Peggy Fletcher Stack put a notice on Facebook

to share challenges they volunteered for

and overcame 
to be published in the daily newspaper.
A week or so later, the article appeared:
“From beating addiction to riding a bike in crazy traffic

or letting gray hair show. . .”

B-I-N-G-O

Shelly Cleveland, Cedar City, wrote:

“Letting my hair go gray.

Doesn’t sound too hard, right?

Just stop dyeing your hair.

Well, it didn’t take long before the negative feedback started!

‘You’re too young to go gray.'

'Mom, it makes you look so old!’

One man even asked my husband if I was his mother.

Still, I made the goal to see it through.

It took me a full year,

But I did it.

I am sad society puts such restrictions

and stereotypes on us.

I didn’t let myself go.

I finally let myself be myself.”

* 

For me, I didn’t let my hair turn gray

on purpose;

I was just too lazy to color it one more time.

Still, I’m going to bow, curtsy

and take credit for overcoming a hard thing

even though I still get a little scared every time

I see myself in the mirror

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

On her way to work,

Amy messages me that Gnocchi is outside.

It is snowing like crazy.

Our biggest storm of the season.

Most schools started late as well as all state offices.

Dutifully, I go right downstairs to rescue poor Gnocchi.

He was on the deck begging and clawing to come in.

Last night, I locked the safety latch on the door,

which we normally don’t do except when we girls are home alone.

(DeRay & Ed flew to Vegas for a few days to cavort with Clare.)

I could not budge the lock.

It’s supposed to pop up when you touch it.

First I put my shoes on so I can push harder.

Still won’t budge.

Frustrating.

I get the butcher knife; I get the hammer.

Then I go to the front door and open it, calling “Here Kitty Kitty Kitty,”

thinking he would see and hear me and leap around to the front door.

I do that three times.

He just cries and claws at the back door.

Finally I remember the door in the dining room.

DeRay had just opened it to bring in the balance table.

It came open easier than usual so I don't plan on it being stuck.

I didn’t have the strength to budge it.

Still I tried it three times.

I was in hopes someone would come plow our driveway

and I would coax him to go get Gnocchi.

I wasn’t sure I could maneuver in the deep snow

to walk clear around the house and pick him up.

After an hour,

I decided I had no alternative but to put on hat, coat, gloves, and boots – 

except I couldn’t find my winter boots so I had to settle for lesser.

I also take my phone in case I fall.

I go out through the garage door,

thinking surely when Gnocchi hears the garage door open,

he will come bounding in.

Nope.

I carefully head out through the relatively deep snow

not knowing what hazards lay buried underneath.

Mercifully, I get to the deck without slipping or falling.

Gnocchi sees me.

I think he is running toward me so I don’t have to climb the steps.

(You know cats are thoughtful like that.)

Nope.

He jumps down and runs under the deck.

I’m not crawling under the deck for him.

He’s on his own.

I get half-way around the house when this black streak leaps past me.

He was waiting at the door in the garage to get in the house.

I’ve had my adventure for the day.

I message Amy that I’ll tell her about Gnocchi when she gets home.

She assumes he’s dead;

I never look at my phone again

so she didn’t know until she got home that all was well.

She went right over and pressed the lever with her finger

and it popped right up.

It must have been frozen.

I put all my tools away.

January 17, 2020

Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus

     This morning, I woke up for the final time when I heard “JEANETTE” again louder “JEANETTE!”  “What?” “I’m stuck.”

     He was on the floor between the bed and the wall. “What can I do?” “Pull the beds out.” So I pulled my bed and then his out so he had room to maneuver. Afterwards, I thought I missed my golden opportunity to get even. I should have told him that I’d help him when I get darn good and ready. Nobody's going to tell me what to do.

     DeRay routinely keeps Eddy waiting up to an hour and a half for lunch or dinner because “everything doesn’t happen right when he expects it. I’ll get up when I’m ready.”  Or to me when I ask him to do something (like get the cardboard boxes out of the front room) after he has been watching TV 6 to 15 hours, “Nobody tells me what to do.” “Quit bossing me around. You're not my mother. I’ll do it when I’m good and ready not when you order it.” I forget what I asked him to do before he gets out of the chair. Yesterday, Amy was getting dinner. I offered to help but it was hard for me to mash the potatoes with her new squeezer so I asked DeRay if he would come and do it. He kept watching TV, even when I asked him again. Finally Amy did it. She was cooking chicken, making a salad, biscuits, and everything else. I asked him to go downstairs and get some eggnog.  “You guys act like I’m not 85.”  So I hobble down.

     But I’m not a man so I helped him get unstuck this morning and I’m glad I did. (I whine sometimes too.)

The Errant Hearing Aids

I hate hearing aids.

I do.

You can hear every rattle and scratch,

crackle and crunch

but you can’t tell what people are saying

around the dinner table.

Sometimes they’re on and sometimes they’re off

for no apparent reason.

They hide from you and

get lost in the strangest places.

For example,

you’re not supposed to use hairspray

with hearing aids in

so I take them out.

If I don’t have pockets

I might wind them in the

stretchy waistband of my pants

so the hairspray doesn’t hit them.

Then if you’re, say around 83-years-old,

you forget about them completely.

An hour later as we’re zooming up the freeway,

I remember them.

WHERE ARE THEY?

Was I upstairs or down?

I feel in my waist band and find the hearing aid.

Whew.

It scares me too.

Where is the transmitter?

In the hallway, kitchen, garage, driveway?

Neither Amy nor I has our cell phone

so we borrow a cell phone and

call DeRay.

He looks for a good half-hour.

On the way home,

I’m rubbing my thighs and

 feel something. .

"Amy, I think I found my transmitter!”

I reach down my pantleg and

HALLALUJAH!

I’m always going to put them someplace safe.

They are not going to hide from me ever again.

I promise.

The very next morning,

as the water hits my head in the shower

and after Ed and I have been swimming

for an hour and ten minutes,

I touch the hearing aid in my left ear.

I am sick.

I didn’t have the transmitter in

because I was listening to books on tape

while eating breakfast.

“I need Elder Care,”

I moan to DeRay & Amy when we walk in the door.

Amy put it in rice.

We’ll know in a few days.

Do you see why I hate hearing aids?

They are so naughty.

A Poignant Scene

Doing my stretches each morning, I open the blinds to do Tree and Sun Salutations. It has snowed each morning since Christmas and is so entrancing. On New Years Day when I opened the blinds, I noticed Ed Denny across the street getting out of his car and walking into the garage. Soon he came walking out slowly with his wife and carefully got her situated in the car. Then he went over and lowered his flag and gently walked it into the house. He came back out and they drove off. Why would they go on a snowy morning? I think I know. Their son in New Mexico is being treated for cancer. He has no family there. The whole scene made me so sad.  Kathi (her husband calls her Katy) was born and raised in Germany. Her father helped clean up Dresden after it was bombed out during World War II. Still they fly an American Flag each day they are here. They had three children; their little girl died at two years old. Both of their sons’ wives died young.  They only have one grandchild (whom they virtually raised. He went to school here and all because both of his parents worked) and he moved to Alabama with his family. Ed mowed our lawn last summer more than Karlton did. He’s always doing things for the neighbors. When we moved here, they were barely 50—just liked us—and now they are old and rickety—just like us. Kathi is very positive and always thinks the best will come to pass. She says she has good vibes about her son’s prognoses. Looking out my window was sort of like time passing by in slow motion. Thirty-two years of watching them grow old out my window and doing their best to alleviate the sorrow and suffering that comes into all our lives.

Kathi is as crippled up

as I am, having had both hips

and both knees replaced,

plus several back operations;

but she refuses to use a cane.

She doesn’t want to look old,

like me.