I’m home from the cabin – finally – but I feel like I’m sleepwalking. When we arrived home Sunday afternoon I went straight to the home of my former student who passed away. This is a fractured home. It’s a home that holds great sadness right now. I wanted to call first – but in my card box with info on all the students I’ve had, Mike’s card was missing. I looked on the white pages online and at least they had the address. So I went over. I don’t need to dwell on the great void that exists after the death of a child of any age. That house will be a home again but it’ll never be the same home. It’ll always hold an empty space.
I helped them with the obit and I’m going to speak at the service Friday. Also making a photo board with 7th and 8th grade memories. I’ve done other things this week, including two lunches with friends, but nothing feels quite real. Come Saturday, though, I’ll be able to put it behind me and move forward. Mike’s family won’t be doing that so easily.
It’s an unfortunate way to begin the reflection on Home – February’s Creative Every Day theme. But that’s life isn’t it? Good, bad, in-between, all begging for understanding, celebration, mourning, creation.
Loose ends: I was looking for a measuring tape in my purse today and I found – my tripod plate! I knew it had to turn up soon, now that I’ve got two more on order. My phone stopped charging so I spent three days cell-phoneless. Wasn’t so bad really. But I couldn’t call anyone because their numbers were in my phone! New Blackberry is now in hand, thanks to the Assurion insurance program. At $5 a month and a $50 deductible, it would take a long time to reach the cost of a new Blackberry. A missing package that UPS showed as delivered showed up – they delivered it to my next-door neighbor by mistake, and she rarely uses her front door. Finally, she brought it to me, and I emailed the company, that meanwhile was shipping me another one. Photoshop stopped working on my computer, and I suspect my computer is going out. Glitch after glitch has been occurring. My macbook dies recently but it’s now fixed. It just feels sort of chaotic around here and it clutters my mind. Talk about a cluttered home? A cluttered mind is worse.
I seem to be losing things – my brand-new Treo, my iTouch, then the tripod plate. It seems to happen when I put something in a place other than the accustomed place. I tell myself, remember where you are putting this, it’s not the usual place. Doesn’t seem to work very well. Leah says she’s cleaning out her purse, her files, getting things in order. I have a tip, Leah – don’t put stuff in brand new places! Of course, Leah’s young. She can still remember.
I remember that after than 1994 Northridge earthquake, two of the kids came home. All three girls lived at the epicenter, attending college at CSUN. We completely rearranged the house to enable them to move home, then one got an apartment and we rearranged again, then the other got an apartment while the first one came back home, so everything was changed again. Then, our youngest daughter was pregnant and Ali was born, so we cleared out of our master bedroom so Kim and Ali could have it, and by the time all of this was over – we couldn’t find anything! We’ll be moving in about a year so we can get used to everything well ahead of the time when it’ll be too late to remember new things. More lessons from observing my parents.
Even this post is rather chaotic, isn’t it? It’ll have to do. I’ll end with the last of three poems I wrote at the cabin. It touches on home – the forest home, home for our thoughts.
Barren
The forest in winter
Is deceptively barren.
The only signs of life
Are footprints in snow.
An occasional crow
Squawks a greeting.
Or is it a warning?
Stay out of my woods.
The bird feeders sit empty.
The seed-eaters are gone,
As are the hummingbirds.
But their nectar waits, unfrozen.
I look out the upper window
Hoping to see a deer,
Because I once saw one there.
Why would it happen again?
Yet at dawn my heart quickens.
I look through that window,
The same window, the same spot,
Knowing there won’t be a deer.
No deer, no disappointment.
I knew it wouldn’t come.
Nothing green breaks free.
The snow is deep.
The deceptively barren forest,
The winter woods
Offer stillness and space.
Thoughts fill my woods.
