Three Years

The date might seem a little off. My mother died on December 2, 2008, and according to the calendar, this post is premature. But her passing took us all by surprise the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, so today feels like the day even though the calendar says it’s not. The heart must keep its own anniversaries.

Aggie, ca. 1943

After three years, the biggest chunks of grief have resolved as much as they’re likely to. I can drive along the street where she lived without thinking I should stop in to visit. Big band music doesn’t make me cry anymore. I get nostalgic, but not heartbroken, at the sight of flowers like the ones she used to grow on the farm. I no longer believe I will feel better if I move to another house or get a career or have a little plastic surgery, even though I seriously considered all of them in that first year or two after she died. When the brain fog lifted a bit, it became clear that no matter where I live or what big changes I make, nothing can fill the hole her absence has left. Lacking any choice in the matter, I accept this. Resignation will have to substitute for resolution.

Aggie & Fred, 1947

I have given up wishing my mother’s life had been different. Mostly. It’s a hard habit to break, even though it’s an obvious waste of time. Tragedy makes more interesting storytelling, and many aspects of Mom’s existence truly were harder than she deserved, but I’m starting to see that portraying her as a victim does her an injustice. No matter what was going on, she always managed to carve out a corner where she could do what she enjoyed in the company of people who loved her. I don’t know if she ever expected to be happy, but maybe that corner was enough.

Aggie, early 1950s

I feel a bit untethered without her, which you could take to mean either “without anchor” or “free,” and both would be true. As in, “Huh. Nobody needs me.” Or, “Yay! Nobody needs me.” My phone is quieter than when Mom was alive and couldn’t remember something I’d just told her an hour earlier. I am not on a first-name basis with her pharmacist, dentist, or physician  anymore. I don’t do her shopping, manage her finances, arrange her appointments, provide her transportation, pay her bills, or dose her medications. These days, I’m only responsible for my own household. For months after she died, I didn’t know what to do with all the extra time. Now I write a blog and am working on a book. I’m a hospice volunteer, a job that feels more valuable than anything I could get paid to do. When my friends want to see me, I have time. One of these days, I’ll be taking care of someone again. This is just a breather between gigs.

Aggie & Michelle, Easter 1968

Still…

Even though I know I should keep moving forward, I call Mom back now and then. I take her to Granville and make her live in a drafty farmhouse with no heat upstairs. She is very patient and allows me to dress her in faux Chanel suits and pillbox hats like a 1960s paper doll. If I listen carefully, I can hear her singing at the piano or swearing at a painting she’s working on because the Virgin Mary’s hands don’t look right. We go to the library or visit her friends. Sometimes I just lie on her bed and talk to her. She doesn’t stay long, though. She doesn’t belong here anymore. Besides, she hates to see me cry.

“Tomorrow will be a better day,” she promises before she goes.

Makeover: The Reveal

When last we left off, I was refurbishing an old wooden dresser in order to avoid shopping for one. Also, like other Tucsonans, I am in the throes of the autumn version of spring fever. It’s like what the rest of you get when the sun finally comes out after a long winter, only in reverse. After months of huddling next to our air conditioning vents, we can finally go outside! In the middle of the day! All those projects we ignored, as our ambition evaporated with triple-digit temps, suddenly seem possible. I feel a little manic, but in a good way.

After much sanding and prepping, the painting went well but when it dried, the dresser looked a little more orange than the terra cotta I was shooting for. (The colors in these photos are not true, so you’ll have to use your imagination.) The pillow on the right is the color I wanted.

Judy, who knows about these things, suggested wiping a little walnut stain over the paint to tone it down and give it more of an antiqued look. I bought a small can of gel stain and attempted to read the directions on the can. They looked like this.

I tried a different pair of glasses. I carried the can into better light. Then I took it to Mike. He began to read: “Before and occasionally throughout the project, stir until crazy…hmm, that’s probably not right. What’s that word there?”

“I can’t read it. That’s why I brought it to you.”

“Oh! Stir until creamy. Wait, is this next word prosthesis?”

As it turned out, we could have spared ourselves a lot of squinting because after I wiped down two of the drawer faces with the stain, I hated it.

Sadly, while it’s easy to stain over paint, you cannot just slap another coat of latex paint over the stain if you don’t like it. It won’t stick. Back to the sanding block I went, taking the finish almost all the way down to the gross white paint I started with. I now have arms like Michelle Obama’s. Then I painted the drawer fronts. Again.

All that sanding gave me an idea, though. I decided to “distress” the edges of the dresser to give some definition to the lines so it would have a little character. What I am saying is that after doing my best to make sure the paint on this dresser was as smooth and even as I could possibly get it, I intentionally screwed it up to make it look old again. Then I applied polyurethane to protect the screwed up finish. I cannot explain this in any way that makes sense.

It did take awhile to read the directions on the back of the can of polyurethane.

And removing the top of the can was a challenge, since the black-on-black directions appeared to say, “To open, pity off.” Turns out the word was “pry,” which was a much more effective approach.

We started here…

 And after a few days’ work that was more fun than you’d think it would be, I’ve got this…

Damn, it really looks orange in these pictures. It’s not. I swear.

Makeover: Part 1

I have a fondness for other people’s castoffs. Our living room furniture used to belong to a lovely couple in their 70s who decided to sell everything they owned and travel the country while they were still healthy enough to do it. Our guest room is almost entirely furnished with vintage pieces that were given to us — except the mattress, which was bought new. I do have some standards.

My beloved antique chair had broken rockers and needed new upholstery when I found it at a yard sale in New Mexico.

This vintage patio table also came from a yard sale. It was a little rusty but solid, so I scrubbed it down with a wire brush and painted it blue, then changed my mind and re-did it in an earthier color.

I am not above hauling stuff home that other people have tossed out. This solid wood bench was just sitting unloved on the side of the road. And free is my favorite price. After some sanding and a little varnish on the top, it looks pretty good under the aleppo pine.

This little stool was abandoned in an alley. It’s also solid wood and was signed on the bottom by the person who made it in 2003. By the time I rescued it, the wood was gray from exposure to the weather and so dry that it took an entire can of spray paint to cover it. But it turned out. (The rug it’s sitting on was made from a batch of castoff T-shirts, but that’s a story for another post.)

Recently I decided that I am fed up with storing my out-of-season clothes in those plastic drawers you get from Target. I am a grown woman, for pete’s sake! There is no shame in needing a second dresser, especially since two of us have shared one dresser and an 8′ closet for our entire marriage. I found this one on craigslist. It is from the 1940s or 50s. It is also butt ugly.

Ms. Potential

 Once, she was an unfortunate shade of pink. Later, someone with no regard for grain lines painted her white, and you can tell she’s been knocked around. But she’s the right size, and for reasons I cannot explain, I am infatuated with these drawer pulls.

The drawers also have dovetail joints. This is good.

For $25, I liberated her from the storage unit where she’d been held captive. My friend Judy, who is the Frieda Kahlo of refurbishing, gave me a free consult on this piece, and the smart people on Google filled in the rest of the gaps in my expertise. I spent a couple hours sanding and prepping (bleh!), made two trips to Home Depot for the right shade of terra cotta paint, and worried way too long about how to get the drawer pulls off without destroying this little cap on the inside of the drawer that covers the back of the screw.

This morning, I got down to the fun part: boiling the drawer pulls.

If you boil paint-covered hardware in baking soda and water for awhile, the paint peels right off. Mostly. After a little encouragement from a wire brush. As the last bits flecked away, I thought about the possibility of lead in the old paint, and then decided I would be just as happy not knowing.

While my daughter is away at college, her bedroom makes an excellent dust-free zone for painting. This is the first coat of terra cotta. The second coat and the polyurethane will take a few more days. (Don’t worry, honey, the smell should be gone by the time you come home for Thanksgiving.)

I sprayed the drawer pulls with some of the bronze metallic paint left over from the patio table project because I am…what? That’s right. Cheap.

Working on this dresser has been hugely satisfying, in a way that makes me lose track of time and forget to take a shower. I’m making a second life for something that might otherwise have ended up in a landfill. When it’s done, it will have provided me with a few days’ worth of problem-solving and creative experiences. It’ll be useful, isn’t made from particle board, and didn’t come from China. If I had a paying job like most people, I could go out and buy a new dresser. But look at all I’d be missing.

When in Doubt, Make a Sweater

I have been knitting in a compulsive sort of way lately. I am not one of those die-hards who carries a ball of yarn in her pocket so she can knit while she walks around the mall. I can go weeks without picking up a pair of needles. But this past month has contained some big lessons in humility and compassion, the kind that leave me wondering how I thought I knew anything at all — so now I have four knitting projects in process at the same time. Bear with me here…

In October, I spent several days with friends who needed extra help with their aging parents, and I came away with a better grasp of what it takes to care for someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s. My own mother had dementia so I thought I knew something about it, but she died before the condition became advanced. What I learned recently is that it is possible for a person’s body to continue to function normally while the wiring inside the mind completely short-circuits. Memory is the foundation of nearly everything that makes us ourselves. It contains our personal history and gives context to who we are in relation to the people around us. It contains basic information like which utensil to use at meals and how to find the bathroom. As I saw last month, dementia strips away those essential details, leaving the person feeling disoriented and fearful because everything is new from moment to moment.

For the first time, I also witnessed a couple nights of sundowning, a phenomenon in the Alzheimer’s or dementia patient that manifests in extreme nighttime agitation and restlessness. At about 11:00 p.m. (just when I was ready to fall asleep myself), my friend’s father would get out of bed. Sometimes he needed to use the bathroom, but many times, he didn’t know why he was up. He also had difficulty following simple directions like, “Walk toward me,” which meant that getting him settled might take 15 or 20 minutes, leaving about an hour for sleep until the next time he awoke. This cycle went on all night long. I was going home in a few days, but I felt a new empathy for caregivers in these situations, especially those who have to go to work the next day, no matter how exhausted they feel.

Then last week, I went to a hospice workshop that focused on the special needs of military veterans. Most people, as they near the end of their lives, have unfinished business they want to resolve: difficult relationships with family members, or coming to terms with unrealized aspirations, or concerns about the welfare of those who will be left behind. But as I learned, veterans often carry special burdens. The workshop presenter talked about the Army nurse who’d had to decide which soldiers would be treated and which ones could not be saved. And the Viet Nam vet who risked his life only to be condemned or ignored after he returned home. And the WWII vet who suffered from survivor’s guilt because so many of his buddies didn’t make it back alive. We all have parts of our lives we wish had been different, but fortunately, most of us don’t carry life-and-death burdens around for decades. Many vets do.

But it was still an intellectual exercise until the workshop presenter asked all the veterans in the group to stand. Hospice nurses rose to their feet. Guys with long, gray ponytails and younger men in business suits stood. So did a Native American woman at my table, and I thought about how little we can really tell about each other from appearances. Then the presenter spoke about those veterans who came home changed by their service in ways that made them difficult to live with. She asked anyone whose life had been touched by a veteran like that to stand, as well, and nearly a third of the people in the room got out of their chairs. Again I was struck by the realization that people around us are carrying pain we may never know about, and we should probably all give each other a break more often than we do.

Maybe if other people had had these same experiences in less than a month, they would think it was no big deal, but I feel like some of my inner workings have been rearranged. So while they’re sorting themselves out, I’m trying a completely unrelated antidote to this sense of disorder.

Sock in process (Yes, I do know that I can buy socks at Target.)

Hat will be much cuter when there's a small child under it

2/3 of a shawl

Baby sweater -- 3 days, start to finish

You have your coping mechanisms, I have mine. And if I keep up this pace, maybe you’ll get one of mine for Christmas.