I have been able to focus more at work (my job sucks right now, and the fires I'm needing to put out demand a level of focus so I'm not burned...hard to believe I'm actually considering that to be a lucky circumstance.) My dreams have mostly slipped from nightmares to just weird and unusually vivid.
I think I'm getting better.
I think I'm getting better, but then something will hit me, and when I say hit, I mean like the old Batman tv show, where the fight scenes were punctuated with the graphics from comic books: ka-POW! Blammo!
Oooofff.
Yesterday I was catching up on the Forbes Don't Marry Career Women business. (See, improvement. Interest in the outside world, albeit a week late.) I was reading a blog post on it. Part of one comment (and I'm taking this somewhat out of context, to illustrate my "oooofff," not to enter the blog debate):
My wife recently lost an elderly relative - one of two sisters who never married. The other had already died. My wife is the last one on that side of the family, so we had to clean out the house and sell it. The house was full of the residue from two lives. We rented a dumpster and filled it up over the course of a week. In the end, it was all just old furniture and out-of-date clothes.
Sad.
But I am still improving. Yesterday that left me sad, very sad.
Last night I was reading a book I picked up early in the summer, but I'm just getting around to starting it: My Life in France by Julia Child. She co-wrote it with her nephew (her brother-in-law's grandson...I'm not sure if that makes him great or grand, which is why, as I mentioned, I drop the prefixes).
It's a easy read, and so far, a happy one. I found myself thinking, I wish I'd have given it my aunt, I think she'd have enjoyed it.
Did I mention I brought home seven boxes of books from my aunt's house? And that barely scratched the surface of her library; I just took the books I wanted to read myself, and anything that was old and had a family name written inside. My mom has donated at least a dozen boxes of paperbacks and bookclub novels.
I also found myself thinking: I wish I could have written a book with my aunt. She actually did write us a book, but while she was working on it, she didn't let anyone read it. She said if anybody tried sneaking a look before she died, she was going to shred it. We found it in her file box, 42 pages written out in longhand, with another couple of typed pages of geneology. The written stuff was mostly annecdotes about her childhood in D.C., and a few later reminiscences about the war. Parts of it made me cry...the first time I read it, parts of it made me sob.
Anyway, I was thinking about that blog comment, residue from two lives, old furniture and out-of-date clothes.
I'm really lucky. The things I have from my grandparents and now my aunt, I've never thought of that stuff as residue or just old furniture. I love that I can cook with my aunt's Pyrex and my grandmother's paring knife, I feel connected to them, and the rest of my family (even the ones I never knew, like my great-grandmother).
The woman who tossed her family stuff in the dumpster...maybe I ought to feel sad for her.
And hopefully it won't just be the bicycles I buy them that determine whether my sister's kids (or their kids) end up cooking with my Pyrex or throwing my whole house in the dumpster.
Posted by Nic at August 29, 2006 12:57 PM | TrackBackOne of Mookies most prized possesions is her great grandmother's ice cream scoop. It's a massive old-fashioned metal thing that works wonderfully. We use it here at home, but one day when she's on her own she'll take it with her, and she reminds me often that it's hers.
We've got several hand-written recipes from Liz's grandmother. I've transcribed them into my recipe book, but we keep the original hand-written pages too.
Posted by: Ted at August 29, 2006 04:47 PMThat is cool.
One of my favorite handwritten recipes from my grandmother was in shorthand. I had to have my aunt translate.
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