New Possessions

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A widow winds up buying some strange things. Here are some of the items I have purchased in the last three years, since my husband’s death.

 

  1. A snow thrower. My son urged me to buy one three months after Bill’s death. I used it the first winter, but the last two winters we had very little snow. I can start it and run it, though it takes some muscle to turn it around. And my son has to do the annual maintenance. This was an expensive purchase.
  2. A hand-cranked drain auger, or snake. So far I have cleaned out one clogged drain with this handy gadget, but it works well and is worth the money.
  3. A Black & Decker screwdriver, battery powered. OK, this one is still in the packaging, but I have a plan to use it very soon! The battery powered drills that Bill used are just too heavy and bulky for my hand.
  4. An electric pressure washer for patios. This works very well. The trick is getting a location to plug it in (extension cords don’t work) plus a water source with a long enough hose.  I wrote about this pressure washer in another posting, “Nothing Is Ever Easy.”
  5. An electric leaf shredder by Worx. This product is easy to set up and shreds dry leaves quickly. It is dirty, dusty, and noisy work, but produces good leaf mulch for my flower beds.
  6. An onboard fully automatic battery charger. I bought this for the old pick-up truck, at my son’s suggestion. He hooked it up to the truck battery, and I keep the charger plugged into household current. This was the solution to the dead battery problems, because I don’t drive the truck very often or very far. When people comment on the plug hanging out of the truck’s grill, I tell them it is an electric truck.
  7. A Black & Decker cordless electric sweeper for exterior hard surfaces. Lightweight and easy to use, I can clean off three patios in ten minutes.

And my favorite is? I think it is a tie between the battery charger for the pick-up truck (it is so nice not to deal with a dead battery!) and the electric sweeper. The sweeper has a slight edge because the patios need to be swept frequently, and this handy tool actually makes the job fun.

Here is the ironic part of this story:  for my 30th birthday, Bill gave me an electric blanket with dual controls. “Look!” said two and a half year old David, “an eyectic ba-ba!” I had given birth to our daughter two weeks earlier just before Christmas, and I really wanted something soft and feminine. I was not thrilled with an electric blanket, dual control or not.  I told Bill never to get me anything that plugged in unless I specifically asked for it.

Look at that list above. Six out of seven of these items plugs in.

Changes

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Today I gave a holiday party for my memoir writers’ group. We meet at my church the first and third Friday of each month, and have been doing this for over ten years. For the past four or five years, on the third Friday of December, we have held a holiday party after our meeting, sharing food and enjoying talking to one another in our church meeting room. Last year I had an inspiration and suggested that we adjourn from the church to my house, about five minutes away, for our holiday party. My little house was decorated for Christmas, there was music and candle light, and all thirteen seemed to enjoy the setting. So this year, I invited the group to my home for the party again.

 The thing is… if Bill had been alive, I doubt I would have invited them. This house was our home, and inviting a large group of people late in the afternoon close to what Bill considered dinner time (5:00 pm) would have been infringing on his space. Perhaps an extrovert would have been just fine with a late afternoon party for twelve strangers, but Bill was not an extrovert, although he was a very generous and warm host. It would have needed the kind of delicate negotiating act that any spouse in a marriage of many years would recognize.

 But now this is my house, my home. I can invite anyone here, any time that I choose. But oh how I wish that were not the case, that I could turn back the clock and have Bill here to say to, “What do you think about inviting my memoir writing group here for our annual holiday party next Friday? I think there are some guys you would enjoy talking to.”

 Now as I extinguish the candles and clean up the dishes, I think about loss and change, and I wonder how other widows view the bitter sweetness of new freedoms.

 

Sudden Sorrow

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After three years, I mostly have my sorrow under control, but sometimes it springs out in the most unlikely places and surprises me. This morning on my way to the garden center, I stopped at McDonalds to grab an egg McMuffin. As I was exiting, I held the door for an older gentleman to enter. “Good morning,” I said to him. He smiled, seeming a bit surprised, but returned my greeting. As I walked to the car, my eyes filled with tears. Such a simple thing, saying “Good morning.”  And I will never say good morning to Bill again, or see him again.

CAR TALK

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CAR TALK

                        I have never been fascinated by cars and how they work. I just want the car to run. And I really would like to go back to the days when you pulled into a filling station, and a happy attendant ran out, put gas in the car, cleaned the windshield, and checked under the hood if you asked. And put air in the tires if needed. Remember those days?

Putting air in the tires is the job I dislike the most. You have to almost stand on your head to do the job, and the tire pressure gauge is hard for me to read. And the one parking spot by the air pump at the local gas station is usually taken. So when the little symbol on the dashboard popped up yesterday, I groaned. Of course first I had to dig out the car manual for the list of all the little symbols that light up, but I was pretty sure this symbol meant low tire pressure. And it did.

Rather than drive down to the gas station, I dug out the air compressor and plugged it into the charger. When it was charged, I lugged it out to the car and dutifully checked the pressure of all the tires with the tire pressure gauge, squinting at each reading, and added air from the compressor. The dial on the compressor was a mystery to me, so I had to keep checking the pressure with the gauge. None of the tires seemed particularly low. I turned on the engine. The little symbol on the dashboard glowed. I said a bad word.

So today I decided I would have to throw myself on the mercy of the local gas station mechanics and ask them to check the tires. I hated to do it. I knew I would feel very stupid, and my banner of independence would droop badly. To my surprise, the parking spot by the air pump was empty so I grabbed it. Maybe I should just try adding more air, I thought to myself. The left rear tire was a little low, the other three were fine; I added some air, coiled up the air hose, and got back in the car. I turned on the engine. The little symbol on the dashboard was gone. I drove home, humming a happy tune.

I think it will be easier next time, but I still hate standing on my head.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

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THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

It was a big crash that woke me up at 2:30 in the morning, a crash that seemed to go on for a long time and echoed throughout the dark house. Then… nothing. I lay still, my eyes wide open, staring at the open bedroom door. If it was an invader, it was a very noisy one. Probably the cats, I thought, knocking something down, though I could not imagine what. It sounded as though it came from the kitchen.

I hesitated: should I go investigate or not? If Bill were alive, he would have gone. I turned on the bedside lamp, opened the nightstand drawer, and dug out the security system fob, the one with the red panic button. I had paid for the installation of a security system six months after Bill’s death, after a teen-age pet sitter had thrown an overnight party in my home.  Now I set the alarms every night.

Fob in hand, I went down the hallway, turning on overhead lights as I went.

I met the two Siamese cats in the kitchen, apparently on their way to investigate the noise, too. One of them meowed at me, as if accusing me of disturbing their sleep. I knew if they had set off the racket, they would be long gone and hiding in the family room. I did not see any disturbance in the kitchen or the living room. I checked the kitchen door: locked as I had left it. The kitchen windows were locked.

I turned on the lights in the family room. Nothing out of place there, or in the bathroom. The long dark utility room was the last place to check, just the sort of place someone might hide in. I screwed up my courage, reached inside, and snapped on the lights: nothing disturbed, everything in place.

Puzzled, I turned off all the lights except for the hanging light in the kitchen and went back to bed. My old dog was still snoring on her bed; she had slept right through the crash. Some help she would be! I put the security fob on top of the nightstand, within easy reach. I lay in the dark for a few minutes and then grabbed the cordless phone on the nightstand. I wondered if I could dial 911 in the dark. I peered at the phone in the light of the moon, trying to memorize the location of the four necessary buttons. I put the phone on the bed next to me, on top of the duvet.

The bedside clock now said 3:30 am.  I got up, went down the hall, and turned on the outside light for the kitchen patio. Perhaps the raccoons had knocked down the large birdfeeder, creating the crash that I had heard. I peered through the glass of the door but could not see the feeder.  I was not going outside to check. The mystery would just have to wait for morning.

I went back to bed and thought about the metal baseball bat that I knew was leaning in a corner of my bedroom closet.  It had turned up in the house when we returned from three years in England; our last tenant had been a single woman. I kept the bat, not saying anything to Bill.  I considered getting out of bed and getting the baseball bat; it could keep the telephone receiver company on the bed. But I lay still and fingered the buttons on the phone.

The glowing face of the bedside clock said 4:30 am. Surely if there were an invader he would not have waited around for two hours to make his move. At last I drifted to sleep into a beautiful dream set in a Buddhist temple filled with delicate music and light. Perhaps my distraught brain was trying to comfort me.

In the morning I got up and looked out the kitchen window; the bird feeder was on its post. The raccoons had not knocked it down. Then I noticed the pile of round trays on the kitchen floor near the door. I somehow had not noticed them in my nighttime search. The trays were a mix of metal, plastic, and wood, and normally were contained in a fabric strap that hung from the wall between the windows and the door. I had knocked them down a few times myself and knew they made a terrible racket.  Did the trays leap out of the holder by themselves or had some vibration on the door or window knocked them down?  Or were the cats responsible? I will never know.  It’s a mystery.

RAIN FALL

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Rain Fall

“Three to six inches has fallen, another one to three expected…”

There is a comfort in the rain

The rain that breaks the two month drought

That gently soaks the broken soil

And bathes the plants in gentle showers

 

There is a worry in the rain–

Rain that fills the gutters, floods the cellars

And swells the country creeks

The rain that falls in relentless hours

 

And haunts our sleep.

Asking for Help

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Asking for Help

I pride myself on being independent and self-reliant. When I was about two or three, I told my mother, “Don’t help me, I do it myself.” Little Miss Independent. But during the last part of Bill’s illness, I did ask for help. I asked friends to mow the grass and clean the pool and sweep the patios. They filled the bird feeders and repotted plants. The gardens were so filled with weeds that in desperation I sent an e-mail pleading for help, and eleven friends showed up to weed. Bill was very impressed, I think by my chutzpah.

But in the three years since Bill’s death, I have been reluctant to ask for help. I suppose partly I don’t want to impose on people’s good will. I don’t want to be needy or a burden, the widow who constantly sends out pleas. But sometimes I have to ask for help. I struggled for hours trying to replace a light switch, and finally called a friend. He did the job in less than ten minutes. I tried to jump start the pick-up truck with no success, and called my neighbor for help. In trying to fix a clogged sink drain, I was stymied by a pipe that I couldn’t loosen. My friend Joe had no problem—but I was the one who cleaned out the line, so there.

I think it is easier for me to ask for help from my women friends. Why is that? I asked one artistic friend for help in re-hanging pictures in my newly painted bedroom. Another friend drove me to the hospital, waited for my tests to be done, and then drove me home again. If I need a ride to pick up my car at the service station, I call the woman next door or my women friends who live nearby.

Yesterday I asked a friend from church to trim some low-hanging branches on my maple tree, to prevent the squirrels from dropping onto the bird feeder. It took him fifteen minutes. “Happy to help,” he said, when I thanked him. Maybe that is what I need to remember when I ask for help: my friends are happy to help. And I am lucky to have so many friends.

Note to self: It is not wimpy to ask for help when I need it.

 

Angel Messenger: A Poem

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Angel Messenger

My friend who died of cancer in January

Believed in angels

And said her angels sent her messengers,

That the goldfinch tapping on the window glass

Brought word from her mother.

 

I am not sure about angels

 

But perhaps the red-tailed hawk

Who sits on the garden fence post

Carries a message from you

(You were so sure that the hawk knew you)

 

And when the hawk soars in circles in the sky

Perhaps he is surveying the house and the gardens and me

To take back a report to you

That I am here

and that all is well.

Still as stones, Calm as trees

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This afternoon I was busy weeding the wildlife habitat bed that I had planted in Bill’s memory the fall after he died. It is a bed along the driveway, an extensive area formerly filled with invasive honeysuckle shrubs and prickly natives, now planted with perennials and shrubs that provide food and shelter for birds, bees, and butterflies. There are shrubs of bottlebrush buckeye, viburnum, Carolina all spice, red bud trees, ferns, hyssop, goldenrod, muly grasses, and many more. This extensive bed has been overgrown with thick grasses and weeds this summer, and I made the mistake in the spring of broadcasting a meadow mixture of seeds into the center of the bed–a mistake because it is almost impossible to separate the grasses and weeds from the wildflowers. I am leaving that central part of the bed un-weeded and focusing on the lower end. I had cleared a large patch of ground when I paused for a moment to catch my breath. Then I saw the sleek gray bird, about the size of a small robin, hopping over the ground that I had cleared. It was digging in the fresh dirt with its beak, looking for insects, I think, and seemed to have no fear of me, though it must have noticed my presence. I slowly moved to my weeding stool and sat down. I sat as still as a statue, as still as a stone. The gnats swirled around my straw hat. I held my breath as the gray bird hopped closer and closer. It came as close as two feet from the spot where I was sitting. I could see its bright black eye, and the subtle markings of its gray feathers, slightly darker on its head. I later identified it as a cat bird. When it moved off, I quietly moved my stool.

What would life be like for us if we could spend some time–each day or each week– as still as stones, as calm as trees, observing the world around us and drinking in its beauty?

 

The Peace of Wild Things

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IMG_1916The Peace of Wild Things…

At the worship service last Saturday afternoon, my minister spoke about peace and read the poem “The Peace of Wild Things,” by Wendell Berry. It is one of my favorite poems. Some years ago I copied it out by hand onto a small card, and thumb tacked it to the wall of the cabin at Birch Hill. I sat in the darkening church,  and thought about the peace of wild things, and how they bring comfort to my spirit. I thought about the cabin and summers at the lake in northern Minnesota.

At Birch Hill I awaken in the early morning and listen to the loons calling to each other across the lake. I prod myself to get out of bed, dress, and go down the hill to the lake. Most mornings I am too lazy for pre-dawn expeditions, but I am leaving the next day; this is my last chance this summer.

There are mists on the lake, and no one else is stirring. Where are the motorboats and the fishermen? I am thankful that the only sound I hear is the call of loons, not motors. I grab a life jacket and a paddle for the canoe. I push the red canoe partly off the shore and then step into the warm water before swinging my legs over the side. It is easier when I am alone to paddle from the bow, especially if there is wind, but this morning the lake is flat calm. I paddle, turning the canoe toward the center of the lake. Two loons are there, doing their own fishing. They turn their sleek black heads toward me, unafraid, then dive. They swim a long distance under water and come up closer to the canoe. I sit quietly, paddle across my legs, watching them. They are such elegant birds, with their black spotted plumage and their black-streaked white breasts.

Slowly I begin to paddle away from the loons, moving closer to the shore, toward the west. Behind me the eastern sky is turning red. Too late I realize I am very close to another fisherman: the great blue heron standing in the shallows. He is standing so still in the morning mists– gray against gray– that I did not see him until this moment. He unfolds his wings and rises, like a dignified diplomat taking his exit. As he passes over the canoe, I hear his great wings beating. He passes overhead, his great neck curled, long legs straight behind him, moving to another fishing spot.

I paddle the canoe along the rocky shore, past two cabins that were not here when I was a little girl, and past the pink cottage, where smoke is coming from the chimney. Someone is up. My friends live here, but I slip quietly past, wanting only the quiet of the early morning, not a cup of coffee.

The shore is low and marshy now, and reeds line the shore. The canoe glides through the outermost reeds, the stems whispering as they slide past the red hull. Just ahead of me I see movement in the water, and three dark heads. They are not loons, perhaps muskrat?  I back paddle gently, lay the paddle across my knees again, and raise the binoculars to my eyes.

Three sleek brown heads are jutting out of the water, eyes staring at me, seemingly curious about me. They are river otter, and I have seen them only twice before over the years. I hear them squeaking but they do not sound alarmed. I remain perfectly still, filled with wonder. They swim closer to the canoe, then dive, reappearing in the area where I first spotted them, then swim further away. I do not follow, I do not wish to disturb them.

From the branch of a dead tree I hear the ca-rack call of the belted kingfisher. Across the lake, a motor boat’s engine starts up. The sun has risen and the mists have gone. I turn the canoe toward the cabin. I have been blessed once more.

Here is Wendell Berry’s poem:

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound,

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.