young widowhood

Things in the Night Pt. 2


…that pat your leg or sit in the backseat just the the right of your peripheral vision or that say,

“Hi, Ann.”

There are a lot of ways to meet your husband’s first wife but her disembodied greetings on the edge of sleep is probably not the preferred way.

On the drive home from the city, Rob admitted that what had woke him was the presence sitting on the end of the bed touching his legs. This has happened before. It’s usually associated with an anniversary for him.

“Even now, I can feel someone in the backseat,” he said. “I can almost see a dark figure just on the edge of my vision.”

“What do you think it’s about? Your birthday?”

But it could have been Edee. She’d been up all night the previous night with Pandora in her arms as the little cat alternated between struggle and a death like limpness.

I didn’t tell Rob until the next morning that as I was falling asleep Saturday night, I saw Shelley in the background of my waiting dreams. It’s not as odd as it sounds. Rob had a dream once where Will had given him a hug. And I have a half remembered dream of speaking with Shelley but I don’t recall what was said.

When I told Rob what had happened his reply was,

“So, you’ve been identified by name now.”

I was quite startled when it happened, but I’m not frightened. I am not at all sure what it means. I am sure that if I were to hear a recording of Shelley’s voice, it would be the same as the voice that greeted me. I’d like to think that she approved of my handling of the cat situation and Edee. I was quite worried I’d overstepped and been too motherly. It’s hard not to mother. I am a mother. It’s not something I can switch off. After Dee was born I found that my approach to children – of all ages – in general was more maternal. It made me a better teacher and was a liability all rolled up in a neat package.

The house has been quiet since early Sunday morning. Pandora recovered though it was a very close call. I spent Monday afternoon on my own for the first time since June and all was well. I am taking that as a good sign.

Things in The Night Pt. 1


I know it’s Tuesday and from a fresh news perspective Dee’s first day of school yesterday, the “growing” push for Texan succession and the latest Glenn Beck YouTube parody – except it’s really him and not terribly funny – will all pass the smell test and what I want to talk about won’t. And I’m sure at least half of you are tired of the blending and the widowy, but things come up. They run around the rooms in my mind before burrowing in and blossoming with the rapidity of qwack grass after a soaking rain.

Saturday was the hamlet wide garage sale and hockey swap meet. There is nothing like a dozen or so neighbors displaying their junk and the lure of hockey equipment to bring out the crowds from The Fort. Rob and I, being us, worked until after 10 on Friday night setting up. Other people toss their unwanted onto tables and are done. We treat it like it’s a real business or something. Consequently, other people get more sleep than we do.

By the time we’d cleaned up and were in bed it was after midnight and the plan was to be up by eight to finish the remaining pricing.  At 4:30 I woke. My right leg was stretched across Rob’s side of the bed and the toes were dangling off which is something that can only happen if Rob is not there.

The dimmest bit of light was straining to lift the blinds and I headed downstairs in search of my husband (and to use the toilet because I am old).  At this time of day the sky is bruised by the indirect light of a sun still too far east to do more than send word of its impending arrival. Such a difference from just a few weeks ago when the sun never seemed to set at all.

I found Rob wrapped in our old comforter on the couch.  He was grumpy from lack of sleep and the fact that the sadist train engineer had just crawled past the hamlet with the whistle at full throttle.

“I’d just managed to fall asleep too,” he said.

He’d been up since two. For reasons he didn’t explain until much later, he was up and couldn’t fall back to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to wake me tossing and turning, so he’d gone downstairs, fiddled about on the ‘Net until his eyes burned and tried to catch a few winks on the sofa.

I got him to come back to bed. He was so exhausted by this point that he fell asleep quickly, but I was awake. I got up at 5:30 and was out in the garage by 6:45 and that is mostly where I remained until 3P.M.

But I did come in a bit before 8 to wake Rob who thought perhaps I had a birthday present  for him despite the fact that he’d issued a no present edict earlier in the week. The next day he would say,

“It was probably one of the worst birthdays ever.”

So much for birthdays not being a big deal.

We’d planned dinner in the city with the older girls for seven that evening. It should go without saying that neither of us was energetic enough to really be looking forward to the 45 minute drive – each way – but the sitter had been booked. Last minute sitter cancellations can lead to difficulty finding willing sitters, so we headed into the city.

Let me digress a minute. Earlier in the week, Rob noted that I had been commenting a bit more on widow blogs. He wondered if I was okay. I was heavy into the memory mode with purging old things for the garage sale. On the surface I felt fine but after a bit of reflection, I realized I was a bit blue about Rob’s birthday. Not that it was his and not mine. I actually love planning parties for other people more than I like celebrating my own birthday. It came down to the fact that we were having two celebrations to accommodate the children. We took Dee out for dinner on Friday night and had cake upon returning home. Saturday was with the older girls because their adult schedules sometimes make it too difficult for them to always be traipsing out to the country.

The thing was that Rob has three daughters, but I have one. As much as I love Edee and Mick, they are not my daughters. I am not their mother. My birthday doesn’t mean anything at all to them. Which is not to imply that I think it should or that they are not wonderful or that we have a contentious relationship. But where Dee becomes more Rob’s child than Will’s, they remain Rob’s daughters.

It’s not something I expected to bother me. I knew perfectly well that, with their being adults, we would not have the relationship that Rob and Dee have formed and will continue to form. And I get it. I really do. One of the reasons I have shied away from searching for my birth parents – my birth mother in particular – was that I didn’t want to feel bound to love her like I love my mom or to have expectations of any deep connection.

And though we get along quite well and the girls are genuine and warm, I know they struggle with just who I am in their lives.

The word “step-mother” is not used. I am introduced as “Ann” or sometimes “This is Ann, Dad’s wife.”

And to clarify further, no one uses the “step” prefix in our family aloud really. Dee doesn’t even know what a step-dad or step-sister is.

I am ever conscious of my actions and words. I don’t want to push or encroach or presume or give the impression. I walked into this with more knowledge than Rob, who at one point declared himself willing to be Dee’s father figure but that he could never be her father father.

We stopped by Edee’s to pick her up. She’d been home with her cat, one of Bouncy’s brood if you recall, who was at death’s door from a blood parasite she’d picked up. And I mean the literal door. Pandora was at a point where she was using her reserves to try and crawl away from wherever Edee put her – looking no doubt for a place to die. Even I know enough about animals to know that.

Dinner was back and forth between pleasant conversation and tearful worry. There was hugging and reassurance and I never know when I am doing too much or not enough.

We’d told the sitter we’d be home between 10 and 10:30 and it was 11 because after dinner at Edee’s poor Pandora was no better. We finally left after assuring Edee that whatever she decided to do concerning Pandora’s care  we would support. The naturopath vet had prescribed an antibiotic with herbal back up and instructions to bring the cat in on Monday if she was no better but still alive or a trip to the emergency vet clinic, an expensive affair that makes a jaunt to the human ER in the states look affordable by comparison.

Rob called me from the car after dropping off the sitter to let me know that Edee had texted him and needed him to go along to the ER with her and Pandora. He didn’t get home until about 2:30 where he found me still awake.

Why? The ghosts are back … but then he already knew that.

The Stuff of Memories


I apologize for the tardiness of this post. I know that many of you catch me first thing in the morning or not at all.  Although I have been assured that punctuality and daily posts aren’t necessary, I am a writer and this blog is part of my discipline and I have been slacking.

Slacking has been the theme of August.  Rob pointed it out to me the other day and he’s right.  I haven’t pushed myself overly hard where any of my writing is concerned.  In part because it’s hard to lose myself in a project when Dee is around.  She can be wonderful one day – not needing me much at all – and then turn around and be at my elbow every 5 minutes the next. Not knowing makes it hard to plan and execute, and our lack of schedule once swimming and camps ended just added to the jumbled feel of the day to day.

I have a plan for the school year.  Funny, this is my third year away from the classroom and I still think in terms of the school calendar, making it the basis for my planning and personal schedule. 

The annual summer purge has been unsettling but on a lower level than in the past.  Summer, for some reason, always finds us foraging through the boxes of our past and imposing change on the immediate landscape.  By the end of September – if the weather holds – the exterior of the house and the yard in general will be dramatically different than when Dee and I first moved here.  The interior – upstairs mostly – will be nearly overhauled.  It has its emotional impact.

Dee has been on the edge of tears several times over the last week as we have been going through her toys.  Rob and I didn’t have the stomach for purging her possessions when she and I moved up here.  I probably divested myself of things I needed in order to accommodate what amounted to junk in an effort to keep the trauma level to a dull roar for her.  Consequently, I have been engaged in a near constant war of attrition with Dee for over two years now.  At seven she is finally old enough to understand that much of what she was holding onto was not really all that important and that I have never tried to force her to give away anything with true meaning attached to it.

Except for the chair.

The chair is a brown Lazy Boy recliner my mother bought for Will when he went into the nursing home so he could watch television in his own room. But as he was unable to sit – the dorsal nerves in his lower back were quite damaged by then – and he was nearly blind, the gesture was just that.  The chair ended up being co-opted by his mother though Dee doesn’t remember that and which explains our differing opinions on the importance of the thing.

She sees it as something tangible of her Dad’s that she rocked, sat and used as a jungle gym after I brought it back from the nursing home when Will went into hospice.  I see it as something he didn’t use and that made it easier for his mother to perch night after night in his room, feeling sorry for herself and feeding him the sugar that eventually rotted the enamel off his teeth.

The chair, however, has once again survived a round of purging.  It will not survive a major move.  There is no way we are paying to ship that thing to the UK or even Texas if that ends up being the case.

It surprises me still that the most insignificant things drip with the past.  It’s like slime, clinging and oozing all over. Even when I don’t feel as though it is obviously affecting me, it does.

Rob received an email inquiry from his former boss today asking for an update on his project status.  This is a good sign. It means there is still need and Rob is still the man they want.  But, it means things are going to happen and happen quickly.  By March in all likelihood.  It colors things.

I have been half-heartedly applying for jobs.  I am torn between sorta wanting to work and knowing that work will hamper my writing, be a juggling act where Dee is concerned, and won’t really be fair to any employer because I know I won’t be around in nine or ten months.  The definition of “part-time”  seems more like practically full-time as well.

“What would you do if something happened to me?” Rob asked after a discussion about part-time work.

He’s already observed, aloud, that I have fairly willingly abandoned many management issues because he is around to  do them.

“I would assess my financial picture and take steps accordingly,” I said.  I did not add that I have spent time thinking about this very thing because that is a given.*

The truth is that I would stay put as long as possible, tie up any loose ends and stabilize as much as possible before looking for teaching jobs in Iowa – which is where I would move back to.  I would teach, write and mother until Dee was off to university and then I would search for new opportunities which would not include remarriage.  Though Rob thinks I should consider that because in his opinion I “do better” in a loving relationship – and he’s right – I doubt I would have the stomach for a possible third widowhood.  It’s like being burned down to the bone and I am sure I could do it one more time, if it turns out to be me again, but anything more would be too much – even for an Amazon like me.

Wow, I got off track.  Forgive my digression.

So, purging in preparation for the hamlet-wide garage sale on Saturday and preparing for the school year that begins on Monday.  Dance class registration was yesterday and yoga registration is tonight.  I have a few classes at the university to sign up for and my quarterly calendar to pencil.  And a disgusting bathroom to finish up before Dee’s hair cut this afternoon, so I need to end this.

#fridayflash will be an attempt to continue last week’s story. If you have a moment or two, stop by.

 

*Cheery discussions like these are not new to me. I have always been a “what if” contingency planner. Side-effect of teaching, where the good/successful teacher is the one who spends time imagining what could go wrong with every lesson plan or class and cuts off routes to chaos in advance. Worst case scenario daydreaming is just part of who I am.  I can’t remember not being a worrier.