Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Warmer, 31, and cloudy. The waning Thanksgiving Moon lit my morning walk to the loft through a veil of patchy cumulus. The neighbor in the rental put up an inflatable turkey with a pilgrim hat a week or so ago. Now there’s a Northpole sign on their mailbox, a Santa Claus and Christmas lights. They did wait until Thanksgiving was over. Most of us on our stretch of Black Mountain Drive have less glam. We have lights on at night all year, but just a strand in the front and along the walkway up to the loft. Holiseason brings out the inner kid. That’s Eduardo and Holly’s lights in the distance.
Kate’s still struggling. Her weight seems to have stabilized in the 80 to 81 pound range. She can’t get weight on in spite of eating and snacking. The nausea and the abdominal pain have returned. Her spirit seems good most of the time, but the lack of progress has begun to wear on her. I can see that. What happens next is a couple of more imaging studies this Thursday. Not really expecting that they’ll show anything. If they don’t, Dr. Rhee has agreed to consider tube feeding. She needs to get calories somehow and the traditional way isn’t working.
I’m finding a peculiar satisfaction in domestic work. Dishes in the dishwasher right after use. Throw a load in the washer when I get up in the morning. Cooking what we have. There’s a thread through the day, things to do that are active and loving. I’ve come to like it. One of the things I noted a long time ago was that women’s work (in a stereotypical sense) dealt with life’s basics. Eat. Clean. Support. Repetitive. The clothes always get dirty. The dishes come after cooking. No matter what groceries and other supplies have to be purchased. Rinse and repeat. It makes sense to me now how homemaking is a noble art, a task unfairly distributed by past gender roles, yes, but so important to the well-being of a family.
Maybe if I’d ever paid attention to fixing things, I’d get traditional male role satisfaction there, too. But, I haven’t. Oh, I have my moments. The jerry-rigged deck with wooden palettes and horse stall mat walking surface. The cabinet doors finally fixed with longer screws. But really it just frustrates me to try make the physical world conform to what I want.
One thing that is different now from when Kate had shoulder surgery back in April is that we have a functioning dish washer. Boy, does that make a huge difference. When I cooked then, the dishes went into the sink, glaring at me until I did them. The added step after cooking and clean up wore me out. Now I get the dishes and pans in there right away and they’re off my mind. A mind saving as well as a labor saving device.
Annie goes home today. She’s had her hands full the last couple of days making funeral arrangements for a sort of ward of the Fatland family, Kate’s mom’s family. Barb was 98. Annie’s also doing a counted cross stitch of the Devil’s Tower. Fine work. She’s out of the jail now after 30 years inside, as a guard. A lot of adjustment as any major life shift like that requires.
Around 8:30 this morning I’m into Denver to the Denver City/County criminal court. Jon’s court date for the restraining order violation. Not sure what to expect. Jon seems to think it will not be too harsh. I hope he’s right. He has enough going on with his house and his car, being a single parent.
There is also a more general, vaguer issue for me. As Kate’s life continues to revolve around pain and nausea, weight loss, it restricts her movements. She’s in the house, often in bed or in her chair or on the bench upstairs at the table. This has a centrifugal force for me, too, pulling me in, keeping me here. No, I do not resent it, that’s not my point. I’m speaking now of a more subtle influence, a coloring of the spirit, a darkening of it. I find myself tired, sleepy, more than makes sense to me unless I factor this in.
First full day yesterday without SeoAh and Murdoch. SeoAh texted last night and said they’d made it back home.
Kate’s tough, willing. I admire her and her ability to stay with the daily routines eating small meals, more of them. Getting up and moving, doing her exercises. Engaging the tasks that she can. Her mind is sharp, the crosswords still get done, her advice is as sensible and acute as ever.
I’m at Dino’s on far west Colfax, near Kipling. This is an Italian place that my friend Alan Rubin used to visit when he grew up on west Colfax, further east, into Denver. The old orthodox neighborhood. Much like, I guess, the northside of Minneapolis at about the same time. His dad was a brilliant immigrant who ended up running a string of dry cleaners, doing very well. Dino’s, founded in 1963, hasn’t changed its decor since then, we both guessed. Great pizza.
The weather gods have chosen an apt offering for the last day of fall, 8 inches of snow. In true Colorado fashion it will probably be here tonight and tomorrow, gone by Thursday if not late Wednesday. Looking forward to it. A difference between Colorado and Minnesota exists in forecasting snow. Here in Colorado people pant for the snow, welcome it, do celebratory dances. In Minnesota, not so much. It means work and slick roads in the Gopher State; here snow means beauty, tourist dollars, and will be gone conveniently.
Went to mussar yesterday for the first time in three weeks. Lots of hugs. Lots of obvious caring for Kate. One of the ironies of this whole situation is that three weeks ago yesterday Kate and I co-taught a mussar session on compassion, rachamim. The next morning at 6 a.m. she was in the E.R. at Swedish. She’s been gone from home ever since.
It was not the content of the discussion, but its nature that finally lifted my stress. Considering the meaning of truth, identifying the Jewish take on it, relating the search for truth to loving-kindness all stimulated my thinking, made me go deep. And that was the solace. Leaving the squirrel-in-a-cage stressors behind for a while, I went into that realm of memory and creativity where old ideas and new conditions meet, changing each other.
There is, I’m coming to understand, a unique Jewish epistemology, one which places a possible truth on the table and passes it around to the many gathered in its presence. Each one comments, shares the part of the elephant that they can see. The process iterates since commentators will comment on others reactions. It does not mean that there is no truth, this is the key move, but that truth itself is multi-perspectival. It takes a village to know a truth.