Love Hurts

The trouble with temporary crowns and multiple missing molars is that it’s challenging to eat. I’m trying, but a few pounds have disappeared in recent weeks, and sometimes I have to wear a belt to prevent the risk of indecent exposure.

Inexplicably, I’m still on a serious possession-purging binge, now that I’ve nearly restored order to my basement. One day I tackled a bathroom cabinet and seven drawers and the linen closet. In the process, I stumbled upon a hidden stash of earrings I didn’t know I had. I reasoned that if I just tossed them all in a bag together, Goodwill wouldn’t have the patience to pair up everything, so would just throw them out. That would suck, especially since there are some nice ones. This is what I did to prevent such a fate; it’s scary how organized I am:

Since then I’ve made my way from room to room, attacking shelves, closets, bookcases drawers, nooks and crannies, sorting through:

• Books on art, photography, linguistics, ESL, and world cultures, along with an assortment of contemporary and classic fiction.
• Art supplies.
• Hundreds of CDs.
• Toys, puzzles and board games.
• Scores of Tarot decks and accompanying manuals.
• A closetful of coats.
• Thirty fat binders of grad school materials and other papers.
• A metal filing cabinet crammed with a daunting array of personal records, many of which required shredding.

I also found some rolled-up maps and posters, some of which, like this one, graced the wall of my bedroom when I was sixteen and reading stuff like The Prophet, Siddhartha, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull:

The few possessions I’m not saving for my daughters are going (or have already gone) to Goodwill or the mounting trash heaps in my driveway and basement. Anyone want a nice Excalibur fruit dehydrator, only lightly used? 

I’ve been so obsessively busy with this current project (and doctor’s appointments) that I’ve had little time for other activities, but I did have one rare social sighting. The last time I hung out with my niece, Hope, was in 2009 when I was in grad school in Vermont and she was a wee thing, barely a teenager.

Now just look at her.

She brought Max, whom she’s about to to marry and whom I liked a lot.

They’ve been on a transcontinental road trip for the last several weeks, and thoughtfully made my house one of their final West Coast stops. We spent two hours talking about cameras, PhD studies in Boston, travel, camping adventures, tattoos, hiking in Yosemite, artistic creations, family traits, and visiting Scotland (where he’s from). It’d be a shame if it were another ten years before our paths crossed again.

As y’all know, I have three beloved grandchildren. I went to see them (L to R: Ruby, Jesse, Ember) in Chico yesterday, staying just overnight. 

Jesse had told his stuffed animal about my imminent arrival. I asked him what he’d said about me. His reply: “She’s smart and she’s very old.”

Em and I did our usual thing of staying together at the AirBnB last night. The original plan had been for her to accompany me back to my house today for another week-long stay. But leaving me afterwards is really hard for her. She no longer cries for days after she goes, but now, instead, she experiences extreme anxiety symptoms like rapid heartbeat, nausea and gut problems, along with despair. She’s always happy to see her family when she goes back, but parting from her old Mama Ginna is excruciating. So in recent months she has developed something of a phobia about seeing me at all, for fear of that terrible feeling. Back in March she was going to come south with me, but after packing up all her stuff for the trip, changed her mind at the last minute. Yesterday she once again agonized over the decision: come with me and suffer at the end, or stay home. After a good deal of struggle, she opted for the latter. Early this morning, I returned her to her parents, cheerfully hugging her and smiling as we took our leave. But the minute I walked away, I could no longer sustain the act, and felt my face fall. Consumed by grief as I drove off, I thought: if this is what Ember goes through, no wonder she wants to avoid it. My heart breaks for both of us.

On my return, I decided I need a change of scene, so I booked two nights at a campground in the redwoods for the end of this month. Details to follow, when it happens.