Category Archives: Life at Home

Driving Miss Drivel

24 Friday Apr 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Life at Home

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

This morning I took my husband to the airport.  This afternoon I took Kyle to Penn Square Mall.  And after that, I took the dogs for their walk.  But to be perfectly honest, I did very little of the actual ‘taking’ on any of these trips, unless you count the return trip from the airport when I took myself home.  If left to my own drive, none of these trips would have made it out of ‘park’.        

 

I have very little horsepower right now, probably because I’m weighed down by sadness.  It’s hard to believe that this five-week Beijing trip that I’ve dreaded for so long has officially begun.  Thirty-four days before I see my husband’s smiling face again.  I know that soon the dogs and I will settle into our routine.  But for now, I feel lopsided, like I’m hobbling along without my better half.

 

I just want to stay home and mope.  I’ve had little desire to write or to do anything the least bit productive.  So until Kyle called, I just sat in a chair and read, another one of those Tudor historical fiction books that I’m so enamored with of late, that allows me to escape to a place where wife’s heads are loped off for no good reason.  A trip to Henry’s court always has a way of putting my own woes into perspective. 

 

No woes from Kyle today.  For whatever reason, he was in a great mood, but he certainly noticed I was cranky.  He called me on my moodiness pretty quick, which may have worked to dissipate my edginess.  He was so appreciative that I stopped moping long enough to help him select some new dress clothes for tonight’s BSU Banquet.  New clothes have a way of making a person feel as though their putting their best foot forward. 

 

And I guess I put my own best feet forward when I grabbed a couple of dog leashes for a daily walk around the park that I could no longer postpone.  The poodles rewarded me with many displays of appreciation–including circus pirouettes from Maddie and a big lick on my neck from Max who was standing almost eyeball to eyeball with me, two hind legs planted on the floor and both front paws planted on my chest.  The poodles didn’t seem to notice my crankiness or the fact that I was slowing down their poodle parade with my dead weight.  Instead, I received a lot of poodle smiles that seemed to say, “Atta Girl.”  “Good Poodle Mommy.”  Even at my best, I am dragged up and down Mesta Park sidewalks full speed ahead, two poodle top knots fast.

 

Tomorrow, I’ll make myself get up and go again.  But today, I’m having my own little pity party.   What sounds good is a warm lazy river and an inner tube; or perhaps a margarita on the rocks while floating in the tube, if the river were shallow enough.  No place to go and all day to get there.  But instead, I’m writing.  Because Kyle told me I should.  And without any drive, I know its pure drivel.   But who cares?  Tomorrow, I can always hit ‘delete.’

Escaping the Heat

23 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

I’ve slept with the windows open the last two nights in our upstairs bedroom that is patterned off an old fashioned sleeping porch, with six windows facing in three directions.  Being lulled to sleep by the sounds of the night and the stirring of a gentle breeze carries me back to my childhood, in the days before most homes had acquired the cooling luxury of central air conditioning.

 

There were other ways to escape the confining heat of a hot house in those days.  One of our favorites was to load up our Chevy and drive over the Dairy Queen in Seminole to indulge in a Hot Fudge Sundae.  The one in Shawnee was closer, but Daddy always found the local franchise chintzy with their chocolate fudge, so we would drive twenty miles out of our way to ensure we received our fair share of chocolate.  I guess the extra sauce and Dad’s personal satisfaction were worth more than the cost of gasoline—which at that time was only 18 cents a gallon—and the drive over to Seminole with all the windows down was part of the entire cooling down experience.     

 

We often took in an afternoon matinee at one of Shawnee’s two movie theatres.  A sure sign of the times, the marquee carried the words “Air Condition Comfort” right beside the title of whatever movie was being featured.  I went more with Dad than Mom, who probably just appreciated being left in a quiet home without children underfoot.  I remember seeing Cleopatra with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and a personal favorite to this day, a film called Marnie, an Alfred Hitchcock film starring Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren.  I recall many Walt Disney movies, especially those starring Hayley Mills, like Moon Spinners, Pollyanna and Summer Magic, which left me with an affected British accent that quickly evaporated in the Oklahoma heat.

 

Then there was always water – sometimes we kids would be go swimming at one of the local municipal pools, but much more often within a small aired up plastic pool in our own back yard.  Sometimes we just ran through an oscillating water sprinkler, or dived belly first on a Slip ‘N Slide or tried to get that water blasting Water Wiggle to work like the one that performed so well on television commercials.  Summer afternoon picnics often took place at a water park, like Roman Nose or Tuner Falls.

 

The ways of escaping heat require less imagination and initiative these days.  When we lived in Texas, my husband and I had this gorgeous outdoor pool that was rarely used.  The kids mostly stayed inside, watching a movie or playing a Nintendo game.  I can’t say that I blame them, as where we lived on the Gulf Coast, it was common to observe steam rising from the ground.

 

But it’s nice to know that the magic offered by a warm evening waits just beyond our doorstep.  It’s as easy as taking time to sit in a lawn chair to wait for the lightening bugs to come out.  And to drink in the sounds and smells of an Oklahoma spring day, knowing that summer is just around the corner – as is our central air conditioner, for those days and nights that stifle all desire for fond reminiscing.  

The Final Word?

22 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

There is something different about daddy. 

 

This week and last, daddy appears sad.   His eyes look sunken.  When I speak to him, it takes a while to capture his attention.  He goes from hanging on, as if he never wants to let go of my hand, to an almost complete withdrawal that is hard to describe.  While he’s there in body, his mind seems far away.  It’s a kind of blowing hot and cold, and I’m not sure if there’s a way to adjust the thermostat or whether we are past the point of fine-tuning.  Is Daddy’s body on its last legs?

 

I am sad.  Yet, I know Dad will be okay.  Not because he will continue to hobble along in this world, but because I possess this abiding sense that Dad’s life will continue in some altered state once his soul flies free of his body.  Daddy may be taking the first steps of his final dance on earth, but there will be other dances with partners more attractive than his much ignored walker and the walls and pieces of furniture he uses as support to shuffle his way around the house.

 

Some will find this all to be just ‘wishful thinking’ on my part.  “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”   Or the cuter variation my friend Ann recited with her daughters, back in the days of young family when her husband Jack was still alive:  “If wishes were Crisco, then beggars would fry.”  In response to either of these proverbs, I would simply smile and echo the words my youngest ‘grand’ so often says.  “That’s otay.”  I’m not too bothered about what other’s choose to think about matters, like life after death, that are based solely on belief rather than first-hand experience.  It’s just as easy to believe as to not.  Or as expressed more eloquently by Blaise Pascal:  “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.”

 

But there are those near death experiences one reads about.  And those personal stories I’ve heard from others.  One story was from Ann in fact.  Hard to believe it happened almost four years ago now.  Her son-in-law Stuart was on his last legs, after a two year battle with leukemia.  When no more could be done, M.D. Anderson released him to Hospice.  And in an apartment within the Houston Medical Center complex, his wife and children gathered around Stuart to say a month’s worth of final good-byes. 

 

Close to the end, perhaps it was during Stuart’s last days, he shared a final gift with his gathered family.  Stuart told Ann that he had seen Jack, who by that time had been dead fourteen years.  From all my reading on death during my time as a Stephen Minister, this ability for the dying to see the dead is not uncommon.  I read a book written by two hospice nurses that reported case after case of near death experiences like the one Stuart shared with his family.  I pulled it out last night and begin flipping through it, wondering if my sister might like to skim though it as well.  Appropriately, the book is called Final Gifts.

 

This word ‘final’ that weaves through my words — final dance, final goodbye and final gift – I should not have used if death is not the final word.