January 26, 2008
Stream of Consciousness
Somehow feelings that run through me seem so cold once just
laid out on paper. I have spent today reading a Jan Carron book and realizing
why I have not been writing. It is
because I have not been reading. It’s
easy to cover over those strong feelings inside my heart with life. It’s even easier not to let myself feel them
at all but just bury them in the days that slip through the telling of the
heart’s story. And detail? Who cares about the tiny incidences inside
one day? How did the cold metal mailbox
feel to a hand pulling out the day’s mail?
I open my back door to let Mego (my black lab) run outside. From a business across the fence in back of
me, a 1960’s folk song plays loudly, causing a slight shock-wave as it almost
seems to skip right past all my ears into another time. It was a time when people advised everybody
not to have babies because the days ahead were too uncertain, but it was too
late. I remember the unrest of 1968 when
Kevin was less than two months from being born and the apartments in back of
our own burned to the ground.
…
Mego runs past me back into the house and I close the door
on the music and sit down in my chair to read some more, but I have to stop
because my mind is too full of feelings with no words to go with them.
Where are my children?
Christi calls every day. We’re
quite a pair, she and I. We hug each
other through chain mail and phone calls and sometimes for real. But today my children are off with their own
adventures, with their own children and memories and lives, looking
forward. I sit here looking backward,
gathering up memories from the past like a bouquet of bright flowers placed on
the dining room table inside my thoughts.
My chair is warm and comfortable and I rest my head as I can
smell those flowers as if they were five minutes ago. My chair reminds me of the front seat of our
1955 Pontiac where I sat between Mama and Daddy. I was twelve years old, much too old to still
ride up front like that.
But the feeling jumps away as quickly as it comes, and I
scan my life as quickly as one watching it before their eyes when dying.
Suddenly I see my friends; Laverne’s face young and pretty
and Belvia’s blonde hair all beautiful, and it feels like we are hugging each
other someplace I have never even been.
It has no walls or shape like in a dream and I hear us laughing. Then that hug too is gone.
“Where is everybody?”
I think in my half-awake half-asleep place in my chair. I called Winnie at 9 A.M. but she was already
out for the day. Winnie is my most
special friend, but I doubt she knows it.
What is wrong with the words “I love you,” between two hearts on this
earth? Maybe it would make us too
vulnerable? Of course a woman and a man
can’t say the words to each other without being thought of as “in love”.
That reminds me of Mac, my best guy friend. Like my children, he is off with his wife and
his own family. I’m just his
work-spiritual-email-friend who will fade away too once he retires. I add another flower to my bouquet of
memories with his name on it.
Work has crowded out my ability to feel, to experience, even
at times to care as so many experiences crowd themselves around me. There’s no time to write them down anymore
and before I can truly digest one moment it has vanished and I’m reaching
backward to pull it back at the same time I reach for the next one to take its
place.
The phone rings but it isn’t Winnie. Jim needs to know how to turn off Jaws (a screen
reader).
I call Nancy, my new violin partner and make a date to play
Monday evening.
Then I turn back to the Jan Carron book and let the feelings
wash over me and take me away.
Books don’t really do that however, they just reach in and
pull out something inside us that has been there all the time … a time we
cried, laughed, were afraid, angry, confused, silly, anything. They play with our
emotions and drag them from those places in life we tuck away.
The phone rings. My
granddaughter Taylor’s cheer leading team was disqualified because they did a
stunt that was not supposed to be done in that particular session.
Mego’s hair is black and slick. He won’t sit still and let me pet him on the
top of his head but when I’m sad he lays his head in my lap. I wish I could see his eyes because I know
they are full of expression and as close to actually seeing love tangibly as it
could ever get. He hears those “I love
you” words more than anybody and I ask God to let him know exactly what they
mean.
So finally we get around to God who covers EVERYTHING. There is no need to interject every single
sentence with His name because He’s the one who provides the space in time for
it all.
The phone rings. It’s
Winnie and we will go running errands.
As she walks in the door the phone rings. It is Margaret. Again I see my life before my eyes as I hear
her voice, but I don’t have time to talk now.
…
Margaret sounds a little sad but we won’t talk about
why. Did she know how much I love her
when she left? She’s really gone now and
I believe when she was here Christmas we both came face to face with the truth
of it. Never again will I pick up the
phone and thirty minutes later hop in her car for a day of shopping, food, or
fun.
Dorsey called while I was out and wondered why I had not
called her. I wonder too. I just settle back into my comfortable chair,
turn on my book, and disappear.
January 27
Now it’s past midnight, on Christi’s birthday. I really hope she likes her gift. I kiss my beautiful black Labrador’s head and
turn down the heat. The air blows from
the vents and touches my face making it feel sunburned. Jonathan and the pool thoughts splash a smile
across my lips.
Soon I will work eight hours, go to a meeting at church and
then celebrate my girl’s 37th birthday. In three months it will be Kevin’s. Maybe
I’ll write an entry on his 40th.
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