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A Funny Little Valentine


A day early, I know, but I don’t blog on Saturday anymore as a rule and I couldn’t let the holiday slide by unobserved or opined upon.

When I was shopping at the Safeway on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but notice the veritable garden of blooms. balloons and stuffies that had sprung up in the floral department since my visit the week before. It spilled into the checkout lanes and encroached on produce. Because the day began “froggy”* and frigid, I had to whip out the camera and snap a few shots. It was like spring was on display like a weekend home show and I wanted to capture it and save it for the bleak winter days we still have to endure.

It’s not that bad of course. The days are longer. The sun is up before the school bus arrives and doesn’t set until nearly six in the evening, reminding me of the near white nights of June and July we will certainly enjoy. 

And the cold snaps are not as cold nor do they last as long. Winter is beginning its tug of war with Spring, and she will win as she always does.

I was reminded by a commenter this week that two years ago, I was falling in love – unbeknownst to just about everyone who knew me because there was so much more to it than simply falling in love. That is not something one does innocently a second time regardless of how the first love ended.

And why do we do it at all?

That’s a question that has come up too.

Why, even in the face of reality, do we bother?

I know for a number of years in my younger days, I didn’t. Bother that is. I simply went along with my business and interacted only as much as I was obligated to for purposes of making a living and maintaining family relations and existing friendships. 

I can’t say that life was better that way. The non-risking way. I wasn’t happier or safer. And so, eventually I bothered again with mixed results, but am I supposed to win every time? Or even at all? And is it really about winning? And is winning sailing through life without rippling the water or being caught in the wake of events? He who dies having gone through the least amount of trauma wins?

When I encounter people whose lives seem more charmed than my own, I tend to think of them as lucky. But are they, really? Because maybe I am the one who is really benefitting from this plane of existence we call life.

As Rob and I were hanging up from our morning phone call, we exchanged “I love you’s” as we normally do and he added after mine,

“And that’s why we bother.”

We bother because we love our partners, our parents, our children, our friends, our pets, our siblings and their children. We love. Therefore, we bother. Even when it hurts and knowing that it will possibly hurt again. 

 

*When BabyD was little, she would say “frog” instead of “fog”. “Look Mama, it’s very froggy out today.” like the weather was a bit hoarse or something.

Memories


Light the corners of my mind is I think how it goes, but there are spaces I would just as soon leave dark. But I live in the world and I roam far and wide, both in real time and on the blogosphere, and I run across people and situations that cause lights to go on in rooms I never purposely visit anymore.

I was reading a blog, as is my wont, and the blogger mentioned that a remarried friend’s husband is very ill. This friend is pregnant and, coincidentally, about as far along as I was with BabyD when I realized that Will was sick.  I didn’t know how sick or what was wrong, and it would take well over a year to convince doctors that I was right and they were wrong, but that’s when it all began. And I remembered how it felt to be pregnant and know that your husband was very sick, and I felt terribly for this woman whom I don’t even know.

And it plays too into my worst fears of “what if?” because this woman has been down the road before and like me, and Rob, took a chance when she fell in love again and embarked on a new life. We do this knowingly, but with our fingers crossed behind our backs and buoyed by the odds that most couples do not experience the death of a partner young and that our first experiences bucked that trend and the odds of it happening again are very low.

But it isn’t impossible.

Bad things happen. Sometimes over and over and to people who are wonderful and undeserving in every way imaginable.

This just highlights a nagging fear that I never quite manage to lock the closet door on.

A Short One


I had planned to blog a bit last night, but I had a board meeting for the writer’s foundation and didn’t get back until well after nine. The downside of living outside established urban areas is that anywhere I need to be is a drive.

There were a lot of issues to address and it reminded me a bit of the old days when I was a teacher, but in a good way.

I spent yesterday morning commenting on blogs, and it generated quite a bit of traffic here, but it is time consuming. The afternoon was the short story, which isn’t all that short anymore. And this morning? Well, the Internet was down. At least in our little hamlet.

We awoke to a cold snap which had frosted the known world and hidden the rest in a thick white soupy mist. Fog and wireless internet are oil and water.

And I had stuff to do anyway. Grocery shopping now involves three different markets to visit due to availability of goods and prices. There was yoga. And then there was the short story – no longer short at all at 13,006 words.

One thing of interest to relate however; I heard from the writer who interviewed me for her book in 2007. She’d found me via my blog. I had written about using a problem solving technique she’s written about in Oprah. It was something she came up with for herself and she wrote about how she’d used it in her own life. I stumbled across it in 2006 and used it with my students and applied it to dating, when I first got back into it and it wasn’t going well at all. So, her book is done. She is sending me the “galley” to read. She gave me a fake name in the chapter I am in and disguised my story. I didn’t have to be incognito, but at the time of the interview I was a bit freaked out with someone tracking me down for my “story” on the Internet – even if she did know Oprah.

If she will let me, I will read it and review it here for all of you after it’s released. Otherwise, once it’s out, I’ll give you the title and you can hunt my pseudo-self down in it if you have nothing better to do. If you figure out who is me, let me know. Rob laughed when I told him my doppleganger’s name, so it apparently doesn’t fit me at all. But really, does a name fit? Or do we mold it to us over time?

Supper is calling. The preparation of it that is.