Sunday, July 11, 2010

bits and pieces and dreams.

Have you ever wakened from a dream that was so real, and so pleasant, that you did not want it to end?

"How are you feeling this morning Mr. X?" I asked the gaunt man who was sitting on the edge of his bed. My chipperness must have been annoying. "Old", was his reply. We chatted, the sun was just lightening the horizon outside his hosptial room window. It was an early spring morning. "Do you ever have dreams that are so real that it is difficult to distinguish between the dream and reality?"...No (I thought at the time), not really, and images of my dad in his last days whirred through my mind and how the line of 'reality' can sometimes blur. The term, 'one foot in the grave' can, at times, be eerily applicable.

The desire to return to bed this morning and to continue dreaming rather than facing the chores ahead was so very tempting. But that would be wasting a day in fantasy, not reality. And reality (or chores) put off one day just accumulate exponentially for the next day (think of compound interest or a deadly virus).

Yesterday evening Dylan and Alayna were in the kitchen when I received the phone call from my second job. "We won't need you tonight." Census was down again and so many bills beckon and call and whine and scream. agh. Until the desire to be completely debtless becomes overwhelming.

Another twenty-thousand dollar house sold in a day. But the time for me to buy, unfortunately, is not now.

And meanwhile I read and research and research and read..."Yeah. My dad was always much happier working for himself."..That was Randy, standing at the kitchen counter, toasting bread for his breakfast. He was a tenant for a short while, before there were no more tenants.

There are things I would like to do. Things which began with the kernel(sp?) of an idea, a dream that dates back twenty-five years. Still, lately there has been that, "Oh, I'll get my doctorate like my mom did" thing. And perhaps I will, but thumbing through the paperwork, the politics, the dross, is deadening.

"You realize what you want to do, don't you?" Amanda, my sister asked over the fourth of July weekend. "What is that?".."You want to return to what our great-grandparents did." And she was right.

"These people who are pretend farmers.." It was Lisa from work whose husband is a 'real' farmer. Who grows acres and acres of subsidized grain and owns large, very large tractors and whose parents and grand-parents and great-grand-parents were farmers and who knows farming. I respect that. It just is not what I want to do. It isn't what my great-grandparents did, not really.

It is raining today and the cats sit curled on chairs. Outside there is thunder and lightning. The air is still. Birds, in good weather, are loving my mulch pile. They hop around it, picking out bits of fruit and seeds. A gray squirrel has welcomed himself to the patio area with it's ONE potted plant. And I want to do, what?

Dylan is at a friend's house again, as Ray sits on his computer and works/plays. Last night after Dylan left to go out and after I had been called off, I walked into Ray's room. "What'cha doing?" I asked. "Nothing." he replied.. "Well, that's nice." .."Not really" and he got up to lay on his bed. He told me how he was bored. Internally, there was that hurt for him. That pang of my own restless loneliness. "What would you like to do."...He didn't know. I mentioned some options to which there was that internal sense of "ugh" from my very intelligent, lonely child. And so I mentioned his friends, "What are x and so doing tonight?". He had been left out of actvities for the evening, and other friends were working...Eventually, he suggested disc golf. "Great!" I effused (because, really, as a mother, you have to). And so we drove to Oakland Park and initially, self-consciously threw our discs, then moved around the field, un-self-consciously and threw more. We then improved our throws and talked with some drunk guys. And finally, hot and sweaty, decided that it had been a successful evening and returned home.

"People say that it is selfish." Ray said as we drove down Providence, turning west onto Broadway. He was talking about suicide. What did I think? He wanted to know. Yes, it is selfish I replied and then, for his benefit, explained how, in life, there are difficult and sometimes, heartbreaking times, but how those times, even though they feel like they won't, those times pass, eventually. Oh my, for his benefit(?)..when really, there is that which passes for thought: please, please, don't ever, even consider doing this..things pass, life is too short as it is...

In the movie, Julie and Julia, Meryl Streep as Julia Child continually asks the question, what shall I do, what shall I do? And then she found food (or it found her) and she became obsessed. And she changed something. Perhaps it is this obsessiveness which changes things, such as, the entire direction of our lives.


"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks a lot like work." Thomas Edison, inventor.

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