A Box of Treasures

Since I suffer from the heat we get here in the summer, on July 1st every year, I count 100 or so days, and set October 15 as the day when I can come out of summer hibernation and be a human being again. On October 15 this year, I got a bit more than I bargained for: A rainstorm with 2 1/2 hours of continuous rumbling thunder, flash floods and mudslides, including one that occurred on our highway, just east of our exit, and left several hundred vehicles trapped in 4 to 6 feet of mud. The highway was closed for a week and reopened today. I will probably write more about this and how it affected my place later. The above picture tells a part of my story.

Today, it has been six months since Errol died. No matter what happens in our lives, time moves on. I'm OK and by now I can even smile when a good memory comes to my mind. I still cry, but I find it healing. 

 What's left of my driveway/road. A neighbor will help.

As many of you know, I have created a new life for myself many times over during my lifetime, and this is what I'm working on now. The physical work involved in this is pretty huge. Errol had such problems getting rid of stuff, so now that falls to me. Depending on what I find, this makes me sad, or makes me smile, but it always makes me sneeze from all the dust that has gathered in the boxes.

Then today, I came upon a box, a shoe box, that I had forgotten about, filled with my own treasures. I pulled four items and put the rest in a better box to look at again, sometime in the future. 

There was a time in our marriage, early 90s, when Errol's troubled son came from NYC to live with us, on the exact same day that I ended up in the hospital, diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It was a very, very difficult time for me, for our marriage, and I dreamed of a place far, far away. His son died in 1992, things calmed down, I learned to manage my diabetes, and we were good again, but it was rough for a while. During that time I wrote a list of what I wished for, for me alone with dogs, after I retired. This is it:

A small house near the ocean.

A small town or village nearby.

A Doberman Pinscher

A Poodle - Standard size

Large TV and VCR

Computer

Bicycle

A small car

Geraniums in pots, like my grandmother’s.

Roses

Books

Sew, embroider, and crochet

Vegetable garden

Volunteering

Walking/Hiking

Making new friends.

I smiled, because I now have most of that, different dogs, mountains instead of ocean, broken bicycle, no geraniums, and my roses died in the drought, but all the rest I have.

I also came upon an invitation to the wedding of my great-grandparents, my dad's grandmother and grandfather. 

Their date was March 25, 1882. What a treasure for me to keep.

Then I found this from London, 1961:

I pulled it out and thought, oh what fun, I can look up all the places I knew, where I lived, where I frequently traveled to, and so on. However, the writing is so darned small, I haven't been able to enjoy it just yet. 

The Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres

Then, finally, when I was young, I was a pretty heavy duty intellectual. The books I read amaze me now, the poems, I wanted to read it all, the great writers, the great intellectuals, Saint-Germain-des-Pres was my travel dream, the existentialists my heroes, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, I dreamed of living just like they...... 

Another hero of mine was the Indian writer, poet, and Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. And somewhere, sometime in my earlier life, I copied one of his incredibly beautiful verses. It is about youth, sorrow, and peace and I want to share it with you here:

I was walking along a path overgrown with grass, when suddenly I heard from someone behind, “See if you know me?”

I turned round and looked at her and said, “I cannot remember your name.”

She said, “I am that first great sorrow whom you met when you were young.”

Her eyes looked like a morning whose dew is still in the air.

I stood silent for some time till I said, “Have you lost all the great burden of  your tears?”

She smiled and said nothing.

I felt that her tears had had time to learn the language of smiles.

“Once you said,” she whispered, “that you would cherish your grief forever.”

I blushed and said, “Yes, but years have passed and I forget.”

Then I took her hand in mine and said, “But you have changed.”

“What was sorrow once has now become peace,” she said.

                                                                  Rabindranath Tagore

Reading this, I know that I'm relearning the language of smiles and that one day my sorrow will become peace.....

Samson Says: 

I guess we all learned something new about mommy: Intellectual, hmmm, don't know what that is, but it didn't work out for her, she didn't make it to Paris that much I know. And now, here she is, taking care of Faith and me, walking us in this muddy mess, giving eye drops, ear drops, pee medicine (Faith, not me) and good dinners. 

Have a nice day, everyone.