Train Wrecks, Backward Miracles and Life on the Other Side, Final

(Go here if you want to take it from the top.)

As we approach the 1st anniversary of my Dad's death, his house is now on the market. So is Michael's. Now that my sister's kids are getting out of school, I can pass the baton for the house on to her and her family. For the first time in a long time I am settling back into my own space without the feeling of anything else hanging over my head. I've had some of that "Rip Van Winkle" feeling before, but this is the first time I'm really getting the mental and physical space to look at what it means for me to be here on the other side of these passings.

Who am I now that I'm not a caregiver, no longer have a business or income and haven't had a "Friday with Michael" in over eight months?

 Actually, that's the wrong question. I know who I am. That was never a question. But what about this life? What do I want to do with it? With no money, I'm a little tethered, even hesitant to take a nice afternoon drive in the country with the price of gas being what it is. And yet, both Scott and I agree this is not the time for me to go job hunting, nor is it the time for me to venture back into self-employment.

Why not?

The book, for one thing. I haven't been here at the blog but that doesn't mean I'm not writing. In fact, that's the reason I'm not here. Writing a book is quite a mental undertaking as it turns out. It's time consuming, emotional, given what I am writing about (my times with Michael and Dad), mentally taxing and it makes me feel like I have to adjust to life again on the planet Earth every time I finish a writing session.

But it's good, I think. I mean I think it's truly a good book. Those who have heard a few passages seem to feel the same way. I think it's not just good, I think it's important. I'm not saying that with any ego. It's just that this blog hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of what I have to say about these last few years. Not even close. And the book writing is better than anything I've put out here.

I have a lot to do on it yet and then there is the little matter of getting it published. And before that there is the little matter of finding out whether I can even do that since I am writing about other people and that tells me some legal consultation is in my future. It's kind of a big deal, what I'm doing.

And then there is the photography, which is definitely in the mix but is taking a second seat to the writing at the moment since  I have such momentum there.

But you know all that.

The question is more fundamental than "How are you spending your days behind the scenes?"

It's more like, "How are you living your life?"

I've been on the go for so long. I told Erin this month is the first time I've been able to feel comfortable buying vegetables in a year, knowing I will be home enough days in a row to actually cook them. I've weeded my garden, when it hasn't been raining, for the FIRST time since LAST MAY. A full year in a wild yard like mine, full of perennials and half woodland...I'm not sure why I didn't just start crying in the middle of it. Not everyone survived my neglect but slowly my yard is coming into balance again.

The vegetable thing isn't a little issue. I haven't exercised in too long (a year?). I sold my Stairmaster. Our diets were terrible, lots of lunch meat and deli food because we were both just too tired to cook. Going to Dad's is like camping, pack everything in, pack everything out. I know it would have been possible to have more balance but I'm not going to judge myself for that. Losing Michael was the biggest loss of my life. The only loss that could compare would be losing Scott. So, if I ate mostly lunch meat for a year and never got on my bike, that was the best I could do. At least I was eating. I even showered every day.

But I'm home now. And this is it. This is my life.

And it's very tiny right now.

But I'm home, and I have to put the days of lunch meat ends and deli potato salad behind me. There isn't any reason for it any more. I'm not travelling. Michael is gone. His Dad is gone. My Dad is gone. It's time to rebuild my life from the ground up.

So I spent yesterday morning reading the first couple chapters of Laurel's Kitchen, the 1970's version because I'm old school like that.

I became a vegetarian in 1982 and smiled when the book reminded me of my first visit to Blooming Foods Co-op in Bloomington, Indiana, back in the days when it was all mysterious bins and mysterious hippies tucked away in a tiny old building. That was also the year I took up yoga and martial arts. I gave up ALL sweets for several years and gave up pop (I still don't drink soda. It tastes like battery acid to me now.) People, strangers, used to stop me on the street, in the cafeteria, all kinds of places to comment on my skin, the brightness of my eyes. In the dochang, I got comments from other martial artists like, "You don't sweat, you glisten."

I don't have that any more.

But I do have a freezer full of frozen bananas. I stock up on them when I get a good price so I can use them for smoothies.

So I grabbed some bananas and my glass jar of whole wheat flour and another glass jar of walnuts and I made Laurel's banana bread. (My pantry still looks like a vegetarian hippie pantry even though I started eating meat again about 10 years ago after 18 years without.)

And while I nibbled a piece still warm from the oven I read further in the cookbook about the role of women, and about bringing consciousness to cooking and home making and how all those things are the lifeblood of a family even though as a culture we've given them such a bad name and relegated them nearly to the status of 'non-activities."

And with each nibble and each sentence I felt more nourished. It's like that Rip Van Winkle part of me had been sleeping a lot longer than I even realized.

So, I'm just going to say it...

I LOVE being a housewife.

LOVE IT.

I love ironing. I love weeding. I love washing dishes (especially when the orioles are munching on oranges a couple feet from me). I love cleaning.

And I love feeding people.

It's been a very long time since I've done it. I've made a few passes at it, but I haven't done it in a long time the way I used to. Not like that young woman who used to get stopped for "glowing" used to.

When I lived in Bloomington, I still recall cooking in my kitchen on a rainy night when, just as I was about to dish up the meal, I saw my neighbors peeking in, little faces peering out through rain coat hoods. I opened the door (which went right into the kitchen).

"We've been walking up and down the street past your house waiting for dinner to be ready."

They laughed and confessed they had taken on this habit. I thought they just accidentally showed up at such times.

Oh I miss that.

It doesn't happen here like that. I tell people to stop by, that I always have extra for dinner but we just don't have that culture here. I miss being in a neighborhood at meal times. Maybe it's because I don't have kids. We don't have family meals, although Penny does lay patiently by her bowl waiting for me to give her the last bite of my food as has become our tradition.

Erin lovingly calls Scott "The Universal Husband". He is. Thing is, I'm a Univeral Wife. Just happens all three of my adopted husbands died this year.

That's a heaping helping of Universal Widowhood.

That glow that I lost...that was from being a Universal Wife. And it isn't that being married to Scott isn't enough. We are coming up on 19 years of marriage very quickly here and it's a beautiful relationship in a way that I haven't seen too many people achieve. It's not about him at all, it's about the surplus of wife-ness that I have.

The woman writing about Laurel made a comment that she thought Laurel was one of those women who didn't really come into her own until she had someone to take care of.

I think it's the same with me.

Whatever else I have done for money in my life, who I am, at my most basic, is a wife, a caregiver and a home maker.

And that is my own version of the Backward Miracle. I've travelled through careers, and all over the web, living for long stretches like a monkey with a gun, always cooking up the next entrepreneurial version of myself, sampling this, chasing that, planning this, mind mapping that and then came the Exodus of what I loved more than any of that...three men exit stage right and there I am...

Single loaf of banana bread. Single husband. Single cup of coffee. Single dog trembling in my arms through the thunderstorm, then falling asleep there with that little snore that just slays me.

It's all I could have asked for.

Comments

[Kate]

Made me cry...won't know for sure just why til I do a bit more work.
But I do completely identify with the wife-ness. Understand that completely; the crying, not so much, but why not

[erin]

Love you. That is all.

[Laura]

Thank you, ladies. Hey, Kate, if you figure it out and feel like sharing...please do (through whatever channels you feel right to use).