Posts Tagged ‘lost items’

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I’m going slightly mad…


2010
09.02

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Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Freddie Mercury said it first:

When the outside temperature rises

And the meaning is oh so clear,

One thousand and one yellow daffodils

Begin to dance in front of you – oh dear.

Are they trying to tell you something?

You’re missing that one final screw?

You’re simply not in the pink my dear

To be honest you haven’t got a clue.

I’m going slightly mad.

I’m going slightly mad.

It finally happened – happened

It finally happened – ooh oh.

It finally happened – I’m slightly mad,

Oh dear.

I’m one card short of a full deck,

I’m not quite the shilling,

One wave short of a shipwreck,

I’m not my usual top billing.

I’m coming down with a fever,

I’m really out to sea,

This kettle is boiling over,

I think I’m a banana tree.

OK – I don’t think I’m a banana tree, but I may be going slightly mad.  (Or just getting old.)  This morning I visited my parents and stopped at Trader Joe’s for milk.  Of course, a stop for milk could mean you forget to buy the milk but get lots of other things instead.  I did remember the milk, however, and amongst the other items, I got new grocery bags.  The old ones were wearing out, believe it or not.  Or else they were missing.  So I stuck the new ones in a bag with groceries, came home, and found an envelope and package on the front porch, which I brought in along with the groceries.

I listened to phone messages first, returned two calls to people who wanted to rent the cabin, and remembered the groceries.  So I went and put the milk away with the other cold items and began to wonder where the new grocery bags were.  Oh no, I must have left a bag in the car.  Nope.  Uh-oh, it was in the shopping cart still. Or still in the store maybe.

I hunted down the receipt so I could call Trader Joe’s and say which items were missing, and I do mean hunted down.  Where had I put it? I found it just where I should have put it – that was a minor miracle.  I ran down the items and realized nothing was missing.  But where were the bags? Truly, it took me a while to figure out that the bags were actually on the kitchen counter.  I simply thought I’d unpacked groceries from them and folded them up.

That handled, I began to wonder about the package.  It was light, an Amazon box.  Where was it? I searched from the porch to the kitchen, from my bedroom to the office.  I didn’t see it but I didn’t panic, not me.  I thought, oh well, it’ll turn up sometime. I don’t know what could be in it anyway. It was too light to be my new Kindle, which I am dying without – I wish they’d hurry up and catch production up to the orders. Anyhow, the package did show up when my husband got home, went into the office and emerged with the box.

So seriously, I’m going slightly mad.  It was the kind of spacey scene I would have expected from my mom at any time in her life, but not from me.  Not that she was spacey so much, but she was so busy taking care of the five of us (yes, I count my dad as one of us kids in terms of the attention he needed) that little details went by the wayside – details like where did she hide the Christmas gifts, although it was kind of fun when they turned up six months later.

Now it was time to return to the groceries and put the rest of them away, at which time I noticed the grout in the kitchen tile.  When we moved in, that grout was so clean you could actually tell it was white.  Now? Not so many months later? I realize that’s something we do very poorly as a couple – keep grout clean.  I looked outside at the lawn while contemplating the grout, which was perfectly beautiful when we moved in, and realized we’re not good at lawns either.  We’re going to landscape the backyard so we don’t have any grass, but it occurs to me we’re not so good at plants.

There’s one more thing I am not so good at while we’re on the subject (there are many but this one comes to mind).  Getting up early.  At the cabin last week, I woke up at six one morning and thought, I’ll get up and see what early morning is like. I found out that what I’ve always suspected was true – morning is overrated.  It was quiet, calm and peaceful – but so is late night. Actually, it was tiring.

Therefore, I’m going to get more concrete counter tops so there is no grout to dirty; hire someone to do a monthly check of the yard and correct what we did wrong; and forget about getting up early unless I have a plane to catch.  In which case, I’ll make an exception.  I will probably continue to go slightly mad.

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On the Other Side of Life: The Story of the Keys


2010
08.07

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Posted in Essays about Life, General | 4 Comments »

Six Keys by Don Whittemore

August. On the other side of the year, counting down. Life is Creative Every Day’s theme for August, and today I had a stark reminder of being on the other side of life.

My dad is 92.  His memory is going.  There are visible changes daily, and he’s in that delicate stage when he recognizes it.  On the other hand, my mom’s been beyond that stage for so long that she has no idea she doesn’t remember. She thinks she still does things like cook dinner.

Walking in yesterday morning at 9:30, I found Dad at the breakfast table with a handful of keys.  He was agitated because he had lost his keys the day before and was trying to scare up extras.  As he fiddled with the keys on the table, he got more and more disturbed.  I know some of it was caused by him knowing he’d lost something he couldn’t find, knowing his usually well-orgainzed keys were missing tags, knowing he was losing his grip on things.

Mom walked in and said, “Do you remember this?”  She was holding the key rack I made in Camp Fire Girls so very long ago.  It’s green with two big flowers and three hooks, and I thought those were the very most beautiful flowers ever painted.  (I probably can’t do much better right now.)  We talked about it and she wandered off with the key rack.

Dad caused a lot of this agitation himself because he is who he is.  Some of us have insight into ourselves and can make changes.  Some of us, like my dad, both do and don’t have insight.  I’m not sure I understand it: he can bemoan some of the habits his father had, yet have the same habits himself without recognizing them.  He knows he can be difficult (difficult is an understatement) but he’s never been able to modify his behavior.

So my sister had told him she wasn’t going to be there the day he lost the keys, but for him not to worry, there were duplicates and she’d get them made.  She thought she had finally gotten through and he’d just relax and wait.  But that’s not my dad.  Even though he is 92 and knows his stamina is limited, he spent the rest of that day looking all over the yard, even raking it, sure he had dropped the keys when he was fiddling with the fountain (a whole other story).  I’m sure he lost sleep over it, and he hadn’t even eaten breakfast when I walked in.

He just couldn’t stop being him.  He never would have lost keys in the first place; if he did he’d find them right away, and everything would be in order and in its place.  Basically, he would have been in control.  He never recognized that he always had to be in control, yet he understood that about others.  How can a person have awareness, even self-awareness, yet be blind at the same time?

One thing led to another: my sister had taken the extra mail box key so he didn’t know how he would get his mail! (No, she had one made for herself and checked the mail frequently for them.)  If only mother would have agreed to put a mailbox key on her key ring, he’d have that. But Mom can’t even find her purse usually.  Dad knows that.  He was worked into a fine froth.  I made a mistake, trying to divert attention.  I said, “Dad, speaking of purses, do you ever wonder what Queen Elizabeth carries in her purse? You know, she always has a handbag with her wherever she goes.  I think it’s empty.”  The mistake was, he didn’t laugh.  He said he knew why she carried a handbag! To carry her intimate items.  I’m thinking sanitary pads (except that she’s a bit old for those), but Dad was thinking lipstick.  Oh well.

So I said, “Dad, I’ll look and I’ll find the keys.”  And I set out, outside, since he was convinced that’s where he lost them.  But my sister called and asked me to check between the dryer and the wall.  I did.  I saw something that looked like it could be a key tag, but the space was tight and I couldn’t budge the dryer.  So I got a meat fork and tongs from the kitchen, used the fork to snag and pull out what did turn out to be keys, and the tongs to secure them and lift them out.  I noticed the key rack was right above the crack (somehow Mother put it back where it belonged), and Dad had probably returned the keys to the right place but missed the hook. He was so positive they were outside.

I stood up, Dad walked in, and I said, “Are these the keys?” He leaned on the dryer and began to cry.  He was exhausted from this incident. He was hungry, tired, and emotional.  I think mostly he was crying because he knew just how close he was to the other end of life; he knew how much he couldn’t do, and it was just too much.

Portrait of an Old Man by Egon Schiele

I moved the key rack to the other wall so if things dropped, they wouldn’t disappear into the gap.  Mind the gap.

When I left I called my sister and asked her not to tell Dad that it was her idea to look between the dryer and the wall.  Because I was a hero, and I just let myself be a hero.  I knew it was useless to try to explain that it was Cris, not me, who thought to look there.  In his emotional state he couldn’t have processed, so I let him laud me as the hero, the person who could solve anything.

Besides, I think it brought back some luster to my branch of the family after my husband tarnished it in the plumbing incident.

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#CED2010: On bodies, reflections, footprints, and tripods


2010
01.28

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Posted in Art, Photography | 2 Comments »

I’d finally warmed up yesterday after Tuesday’s freezing trek through the snow into my 39 degree cabin.  The sun was out so I ventured out also – but only onto the balcony.  I got caught up in the footprints I’d left from the day before.  Footprints as a record of our body’s movement and footprints as possible art also.

I found myself studying this random pattern of my footprints.  There seem to be three in a row heading toward the railing.  They are so close together and appear to be the right foot – where was my left foot?  Immediately I thought of how we try to fool people by pretending a one-legged creature has been there. Then there are the two that form an upside-down V.  How did that happen?  I know I wasn’t practicing first position in ballet.

I got interested in this pattern – it’s as if I were walking in two directions at once, met in the middle, and then turned and walked off.  I was loving this footprint thing.

I won’t be surprised if this one ends up in a collage somehow.  The left one especially reminds me of Planter’s Peanuts – anyone old enough to remember those? Maybe they still have them.  But I think there was a cookie with a waffle pattern like that.  Maybe there still is.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the cookie aisle – if Trader Joe’s doesn’t have it, I don’t have it either!

Funny, isn’t it, how us artists get obsessed with details and observation?  Because the next thing I focused on was my own reflection in the window.

Since January is drawing to a close, which means the Creative Every Day theme of Body is drawing to a close, I suppose I was reflecting on body.  I took a photo of myself looking into the cabin and merging with my art materials (above).  Body art.  Body as art.  Body making art.

Body in motion.  Looking dejected.  Walking away.  From what?  Or, with the divider in the sliding door, a  body going from one reality to the next.

Just thinking about a simple photo reminds me of all the ways in which almost anything can be interpreted, and how we interpret according to our own understanding and mood.  That’s something worth remembering, because another thing we do is jump to conclusions which are often wrong.

I realized, somewhat obviously, that I was on the outside looking in.  Did I want to get in?  Was I being left out?  Or just idly curious about what was going on.  I realize I was just taking my own picture, but it made me think about all the ways we can be on the outside looking in.

I like this photo a lot.  I was on the outside looking through.  Did I have to go inside but wished I didn’t?  So was I planning an escape out the other side?  Or was I blocking out something unpleasant about going in, or not being able to go in, so was looking past it?  Or was I just looking ahead.?  So many possibilities!

I took a photo of these two tree trunks, shadowed by the sun.  It was bright and beautiful.  And I went inside.

I’d been working on some watercolor exercises for practice, since I’ve just now started using watercolors.  It’s all such a mystery, too, since I can’t paint!  Doesn’t stop me from trying.  And then I looked outside.

In those few moments the sun had disappeared to be replaced by fog – no tree trunk shadows now.  It’s quite amazing to see such a rapid change – exciting too.  Today is all sun all the time, with snow melting and falling off the trees in big chunks.  So I finished off what had become a study of reflected bodies, which in a way reflects what’s inside our bodies – in terms of thoughts.

Because if we can be on the outside looking in, we can also be on the inside looking out.  That evokes its own kind of longing.

I like this photo a lot because I’m on the inside looking out but becoming one with nature.  I also notice that when I was on the outside looking in, it was all in color, and when I was on the inside looking out, it’s black and white – mainly because of the fog, but doesn’t that give us something interesting to reflect on?

The whole point is to think, isn’t it?  This stuff makes me think, contemplate, end up knowing myself and the world just a little bit better.  At least from my own perspective.  On my webpage, in the About section, under My Approach to Photography, I talk about seeing beyond the surface and finding the unexpected.

TRIPODS

The plate that attaches my camera to the tripod has been missing since my last visit to the cabin.  I remember putting it somewhere – not in the usual place – so telling myself to remember where it was. I did the same thing with my iPod Touch and never did find it.  Also at the cabin.  Well, it’s PREDICTION time because I’m about to find the missing plate.  How do I know?  Because I finally ordered a replacement.  Two replacements, in fact.  We all know that means that within the hour I’ll find the missing part.  And then I can take some decent photos of work I’ve been doing for tomorrow’s post.