Home

My cats watch me carefully and stick close;  do they wonder whether I will disappear suddenly again, or is that my own anthropomorphizing this early in the morning?  I woke very early to soft grey skies and now listen to Gregorian chants as I sip dark tea.  I am home, sleeping on the sitting room couch surrounded by pillows, a Buddha or two in the window, beautiful greenery climbing the fence outside and brilliant purple hydrangeas emerging from a giant pot....  It has been a few days and I am beginning to feel as though it is real.  Yesterday I sat at the dining room table drinking tea and talking with a good friend about what I would do with my stepfather's ashes that have rested on a shelf for several years now, and all of a sudden life felt normal.   Yes, the body is still hurt, and the weight of the boot still chafes and pulls on my left leg, but I have re-entered my life.  Why not plan to cast R's ashes out to sea at Bodega?  And to participate once again in creating an elegant website for my fading jewelry business?  I've been unable to launch a new knitting project, but I have been able to dive into another meaty novel -- John Irving's Widow for a Year.  It carries me along the way Verghese's book did, allowing me to inhabit the fictional world, and to admire the bravery and perseverance of writers who work in their lonely spaces to craft stories...  Watched a great movie the other night:  Of Gods and Men, about these loving French monks surrounded by violence in Algeria, who respond to terror with compassion, and ultimately are martyred.   You are taken into monastery life with its candles and chanting, and later you feel the dust of that barren world in your nose, where beautiful women seek medical attention for their children and young terrorists temporarily put away their guns to get help from their Christian brothers.   Very moving story.
Today I will meet a young health care worker who may become my regular helper at home, a woman recommended as "soft," and very capable.  I will be in the position of structuring this woman's job day by day .... hopefully we will become close in the way that happens between the grateful (and needy) "employer" and the person delivering the services.  At least with her I will be asking freely and without hesitation, and I will also have the space to complain or - god forbid - whine about my unfortunate and painful circumstances.  There is freedom in the business arrangement that there isn't with family.  Not so much editing of my words and shielding my cranky heart.
So, on this Friday morning at the end of July I am an extremely grateful human being who sees a great array of possibilities before me:  music to listen to, books to read, maybe a knitting project, or a dinner out from time to time, and lying on my couch watched over by the regal Jackson, my Maine Coon boy who seems always grateful to be living with me on White St.   Each day will bring new awareness of how very fortunate I am and how fragile and precious this quicksilver journey of life is.