Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Up and on the road around 5:30 am. Out to Park Adventist Hospital in Littleton for two more imaging studies. The first one, an ultrasound, looked for narrowing of arteries feeding blood to the bowels. If they are narrowed, food passing through the intestines can put pressure on them and cause nausea and pain. The second, a barium contrast study, combined fluoroscopy, which follows movement in internal organs, with still x-rays. This study was to determine how food moves through the digestive system from top to bottom.
The techs let me stay with Kate for the second study. I sat on her rollator, think walker with a seat, wheels, and a brake. To not expose me to the x-rays I had to sit back in the little booth the technicians use. I got to see the barium she swallowed go down her throat and into her stomach. This was fluoroscopy. Very strange. I’ve gotten to know the inner you, I told Kate.
Afterward we went to Krispy Kreme and got a couple of original glazed to blot out the chalky taste of the barium.
Gabe’s concert is tonight. Big fun.
Last night, as the kids and I were making pizza over at CBE, I got a call from Kate. Cell service is dicey in the mountains, but I finally understood. The door blew open, again, and all three dogs escaped. Uh-oh. That meant I put on my hat and left, telling Tara on the way out, “Our dogs escaped. It’s more important.” Drove home. Kate tried to call me three times but for some reason I didn’t hear the calls. The neighbor had brought the dogs home while I was on my way. Since it’s 30 minutes each way by the time I got home and found this out, it was too late to return. I’ve not been a reliable teacher this first semester.
As we’ve noticed other times our dogs have escaped, they were pretty damned pleased with themselves. Rigel’s smile would have lit up Broadway. Kate said they came home prancing. Oh, what a good time we had.
Life on the mountain. Never dull.
Happy to have some good news to report about Jon. Went to his court date yesterday. His inner attitude seems to be shifting away from anger about the divorce (understandable, but not helpful) toward getting on with his life, accepting the constraints of the restraining order (unreasonable, but legally enforceable, as he just discovered). He wants to get his art in a gallery or up for sale. This is big because it’s a key part of his identity that lay fallow during the twelve years of his marriage. He needs positive reinforcement and he’s had more than his share of negatives over the last few years.
He’s a very talented, smart guy who can handle all the work necessary to remodel his home, replace an axle in his car, ski a great line down an A-basin bowl, teach elementary age kids how to express themselves. I hope he can organize his life so these thing line up, move him forward, and make him feel good about himself.
I’m feeling a bit stressed, a lot going on. Religious school tonight. I’m taking pizza makings and teaching a unit on holidays, especially winter holidays. The kids will reimagine, reconstruct a new winter holiday. Tomorrow morning Kate has two imaging studies, looking for zebras. Tomorrow evening is Gabe’s winter concert in Stapleton. A sequelae of the hearing yesterday is that Jon can’t, for the moment, attend. The old protection order carved out an exception to the 100 yards rule for events with the kids, things like parent-teacher conferences, concerts, doctor visits, but the law is a blunt instrument. Yesterday by default it eliminated those exceptions. Jon wants me to go to represent our side of the family. Important for Gabe. I’ll go.
Got reinforced shortly after the move out here when I had to deal with prostate cancer. That shook me. I worked hard to keep myself upright and maybe, in the process, began to consolidate a lot of learning. A major part of that consolidation came from the support I got from family and friends. Oh. Life can be good, even when it’s bad. Weird. Since the move, it’s been one damned thing after another, or it feels that way right now. Those things forced a going deep, being honest, being grateful a lot. Now, four years later, our move anniversary is the Winter Solstice, my Colorado Self, the one born in the alembic of all those insults, has asserted itself.
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.
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.
Interesting. First, on Dec. 6th I will join all teachers in the religious school, board members, and staff for an emergency response training evening. Stimulated, as you might expect, by Pittsburgh, but always an active consideration.
Black Friday. Should be a dark observance like so-called Good Friday. But, no. It’s a flood the needy capitalists with your money by pretending to save money on deals that still allow them make even more money sorta day. I mean, geez, I guess it is a dark observance after all. Yeah. Black Friday.
We rise from the tomb. Break out of captivity. Care for the memories of our dead. Do penance and reorient, return to our best selves. Celebrate a month of fasting and giving.
We put out our best aluminum tins from Tony’s. Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, sage stuffing, green beans almondine. I plunged the plastic bag of turkey gravy in boiling water. The turkey breast went in a shallow pan with a 1/2 cup of water. We have two ovens and the top one, the smaller of the two, did its job well for the potatoes and the stuffing.
On the table sat our finest paper plates, a big turkey printed on them saying gobble, gobble, gobble. The napkins had pumpkins and vines and stuff. The meal was very good and aside from the now suspect ovens (I won’t mention that the other one went wonky, too.) exceeded my hopes.
Kate’s two months from hell. A modest amount of this excellent meal sent her straight to bed. Not sure where we go from here. Smoothies and Korean food, maybe.
Woke up this morning and did my gratitude practice. At night I consider all the gifts I got during that day, all the gifts I gave, and any trouble I caused. In the morning I start out with what I’m grateful for right now. Both practices seem to soothe me, put me in a place to receive and accept blessings. Life’s a hell of a lot better when I’m in that sorta space.
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.