What to say

I have been writing about the Bobs in my life. Last night I tried to write in the same vein about the Wayne in my life. It's harder. Can anyone tell me why that is?

I suppose it's because the Bobs came and went, and Wayne--well, you know. He did not come and go. Well, he did go but not until we had been married 40 years.

I suppose it's because there is too much to tell.

I'm looking at a picture I keep on my desk. It's of Wayne, standing on a nicely graded dirt path in McCall, Idaho. All around him are trees small and large. His hands are on his hips, his blue jacket tied around him. He holds my red jacket in his right hand and lets it hang down to his knees. He's looking at me--because I'm taking the picture.

We went up there and rented bicycles to ride around the lake, but the bicycles are not in the picture. In our early fifties, maybe. I don't know. It's a picture I like a lot. Nothing grand to remember about it. Just a nice little trip.

Yes, I could write about every day we spent together. But that would get into the everydayness of things.

I don't know how a person could actually do that. Or why.

Mind Tricks

Who can understand these things? Not I.

I pulled out of my driveway Saturday, looked down the street, and saw man walking in my direction. I could only see the top part of him. He was about the same height and size as Wayne.

So here is what my mind did.

Just for an instant, it thought: Maybe that's Wayne. He has come back.

Heavens!

I know how silly that is, how stupid. But that is what went through my mind, and then I had to process it, think it over, actually tell myself it is not possible.

Just because I would like it to happen, after these nearly nine years, doesn't mean it will.

Just a Note

Dear Wayne,
Thanksgiving dinner at Andrew and Michelle's with their boys and others. A very pleasant time. We missed you, but Andrew made the pumpkin pies, carrying on your tradition.

You know, it was nice not to cook the big dinner, but I miss having everyone come here for Thanksgiving.

Changes. They bring their mixed blessings with them.

As usual, I didn't go shopping the next day. Millions did, you know.

I wonder about you, of course.

Love,
Carol

To Lift the Heart

A couple of days ago Richard and I spoke by telephone. Here's one of the things he told me. It's about Axel, his two-year-old boy.

Richard was watching Axel play and said to him, "I love you."

Axel said, "I love you, too." Then he stopped, looked at his dad, and said, "I love you, Babe."

Which is what Axel hears his dad say to his mom.

I love this story. And them, of course.

Of Spiders and Such

I have just now killed a wolf spider. I think it was a wolf spider. It was big, ugly, dark, and it had designs on the blinds in my front window. I mean, like, to live there.

I had other ideas, so now, if it has any life left in it, any consciousness, it will find itself wrapped, crushed, enveloped inside two Kleenex tissues deep in the dark of the garbage can in the garage.

Was it male or female? Richard would know. I would not.

I dislike killing spiders, and this one I could feel inside the Kleenex because it was big.

Gross. And a little bit scary. But I am here and Wayne is not, and I cannot call a neighbor in to do it. Poor me.

So. It is done. Good for me.

If you could have heard it

I wish I could describe last night's Boise Philharmonic concert. Lola and I attended.

I cannot do it justice. The most exciting part was the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3, Barry Douglas the soloist. Glorious, thrilling, brilliant. About the best I can do.

What a blessing to be there. That concerto is one I have two recordings of. I've heard it many, many times. And Lola has heard it, too. But the truth is there is nothing like hearing it in person. Nothing like watching the music pour out of the pianist and the orchestra, to witness their love of the music, their work to bring it to life. Nothing like it.

And better still, to sit by Lola all through it.

Oh well

My friend Sue came home one day last January and found her husband, Wayne, lying dead on the garage floor. She has had a hard year.

No. Wait. She had a hard several months. Last couple of months she's been online, looking for a man. Found one. Went to California to see him. Came back and said he was absolutely boring. All he wants to do is sit around the house.

Now, apparently, she has found one who lives in Oregon. Closer is better. Right? They meet in Baker City, OR. Half way for both, I guess.

She likes him. I guess he likes her. Don't know how many times they have met. I should see her tomorrow and will get all updated.

My response?

Flabbergasted. Kind of grossed out. It's just not me. Obviously it is Sue.

* * *

By the way, on a different subject and one not at all related to Sue's, my friend Audrey told me today she has never eaten Campbell's tomato soup. Not ever in her life of, I'd say, 40+ years.

No recrimination here. It's just that I find that remarkable. That's why I have remarked about it.

It's the widow speaking here

I met a woman last night named Ernie. She dislikes her name, that one and the one it is derived from: Ernestine. Can't say I blame her.

But for me, my name is perfect, and I love it. Carol, my mother's little song. That's what she told me.

But this is not so much about names. You'll see.

Ernie is a widow, she told me she fills with envy when she sees a woman walk into a room with a husband. I told her I feel the same. Ernie's husband died seven years ago. She dislikes living alone.

I told her I understand.

Because, you know, it gets long, this living without my husband. Things happen in the mind, mine anyway, and I can get to thinking he didn't really love me.

I can hear my children yelling at me about that statement. But it's true. Things like that happen in the mind.

But in conversation with Alyce tonight I told her something that, as I think on it now, lets me know he surely did love me.

And it's good to fix the messed up thinking that goes on at times.

Here's what he did:
Less than two years before he died, he changed the amount of the buy/sell insurance policy on his half of the business. He more than doubled it. He did it so that, if he died, the insurance would provide for me. It has and it does.

You need not think I'm happy about it. I'd much rather have him here than have the money. But I'm making a point here.

You get it.

In the Blood

I dreamed all the seas were gone, blown dry by a malicious wind. The ground stretched and cracked and its breaking let out foul smells. Clouds thinned and died forever. Lush became a word forgotten. Green did not exist. No tears welled in people's eyes. I was a fly, clinging to carrion--your love for me long dead.

I think we do not dream in words. But to tell it is another thing. Then words, our tools, become phantom, and where one time they might distort and change what we would say, they may this time not distort enough. We may despair of ever getting it right, whether it's a dream to tell or a memory or a high-minded thought, and we wonder if the result is ever worth the struggle. But the wish to try gets in the blood, like music, like the love of that one person you have to have, and we write--to release the hold these things have on our minds, to sort the moments or our lives, perhaps never to say something final and definitive. It's all quite tentative, remember.

Just Thinking

Paul repaired the bookcase from the family room. I have long thought Wayne built it, but I can't be sure now. Its tongue and groove shelves look pretty sophisticated, and I don't know how he would have done it.

Sometimes I think about moving out of this house, although I know it would take about three years to pack up. If I lived somewhere else, in a place we didn't build, a place where he never was . . . what would that be like?

Would I think about him less often?

The Readers

Charlie, age six, reads very well. He told me he read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He started it on his own, Ann said, and finished it in less than a week. An informal quiz by his dad showed that Charlie understood most of it. He finished another shorter book while I was there. He likes to read. I hope the school programs that force reading don't ruin that.

During scripture reading he read Bethphage without help, needed help with Zebedee's. And that was all.

Johnny, age four, reads with help, but he did read happy without help and then explained the Happy B'day Mom sign to me. "The B stands for birth in birthday, Grandma." I believe his memory is long and flawless. Watch out.

Scripture reading, his mom reads a phrase and Johnny repeats it. Last morning I was there went like this:

Ann: And the blind
Johnny: And the blind
A: and the lame
J: and the lame
A: came to him in the temple;
J: came to him in the temple;
A: and he healed them.
J: and he healed them.
Brief pause.
A: Now I'll read the next verse.
J: Now I'll read the next verse.
Laughter from all, even Edmund.

Sad, but . . .

not too sad.

It's about the two tomatoes. They have been sitting in my kitchen window, wrapped in newspaper. I came home from Pennsylvania at midnight last night--another delay in Denver, but that's a different story--and did not look at the tomatoes.

Too tired. Too afraid of what they might look like.

This morning I unwrapped the small one. Gross. Then the larger one (a relative term--they're both tiny). Grosser.

Good thing it's trash day tomorrow.

* * *

Johnny is still a redhead. Charlie is tall and very much a big boy. Edmund is priceless. Well, they all are priceless. But here's just one thing about Edmund. He sings. I mean he just sings to himself through the day. You would love it.

Charlie and Johnny went trick-or-treating with their mom. Edmund stayed home with his dad. Not by choice. He really wanted to go. Cried and cried. His dad kept promising "next year." Not a lot of help.

Eventually his dad took him upstairs, calmed him down, and convinced him he should sleep.

But I think Edmund will remember.

Halloween. It is kids, costumes, and candy. Hard not to eat a lot of candy when it's just sitting there in front of you. But those boys do pretty well.

Grandma's have to go home. And that is really hard.