restingmotion

Small Joys

Although living with someone with severe short term memory loss can at times be trying, there are also moments of pure joy as you watch this same person rediscover the world on a daily basis.

 

This morning at breakfast, G took a bite of his eggs with smoked salmon, capers, and tomatoes and looked up, eyes sparkling with joy.  "This is wonderful" he said, his voice filled with awe at having made a fabulous new discovery.  No matter that he has had the same breakfast once a week for the past 36 weeks.

 

These are the moments to treasure.

Before or After?

As I sat at the table this morning, savoring those few moments when the house remained at rest and all was quiet, I realized that mid-August has crept upon me far too quickly, and I have been far too laid-back in my approach to reaching a few goals concerning this house and the planned move to another.  It is probably a good thing that I always worked well under a deadline.  Once again, however, I may be scarce, or not.  

 

I did however, clear my mind of all the things I had missed writing about, that I intended to share but didn't quite manage.  The past is the past and I shall not dredge it up except as if plays a role in the present or the immediate future.  And this in itself is liberating.

 

But of course the past cannot be completely forgotten.  For example, when I went down to Knoxville a few weeks ago, I took a book to read on the plane.  I looked at other books in the airport at Newark but did not buy anything, assuming, incorrecctly, that I could buy a book at the Knoxville airport should the need arise.  This proved to be a mistake because the book I took was not long enough to get me through two 2-hour flights plus a 1 hour delay, and I was left with over an hour to kill in flight with nothing to read.  

 

But what was that book?  And how does it affect the present?  The book was The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.   I forgot that it follows Oryx and Crake, which I had not read.  This didn't particularly bother me.  I loved the book and felt it worked well on its own, although I did pick up on the presence of Oryx and Crake in the background, and Jimmy/Snowman, who I didn't even realize was a character in the former book.  But I did realize that it might serve me well to read Oryx and Crake and then perhaps reread The Year of The Flood.  

 

Of course the problem is that I can never go back to The Year of the Flood and read it as if I hadn't read it first.  And I am no longer looking at Oryx and Crake with unjaundiced eyes.  Rather than seeing Flood as the story of minor characters in Oryx, I immediately recognize characters that were minor in Flood, and think of this as fleshing out a different story.  How we read a book depends heavily on what we have read before and how our own experiences and life affects the way we react to the words on the page.  Although I try to read each book separately, without comparison to other works, a work that is written in a series necessarily makes this more difficult.  Reading the work outside of the order in which it was written or intended can completely change the perception of the thing.

 

I am not far into Oryx and Crake at this point, having started it only last night.   But I can already see that I am going to be looking at a world from two overlapping but entirely different perspetives, and I am intrigued.  In many ways this is a gift, an opportunity to explore two views of the same world, in an order that I would not have encountered had I kept up with my reading list.  It is rare that we are able to remind ourselves that what we see is only a fragment of reality viewed through a broken lens. As I see this now, these stolen moments of reading over the next few weeks promise a rich reward, perhaps made richer than they would have been had I started reading the books in the intended order. 

Knitting the colors of the September Garden

I went through a period of non-knitting, or more exactly, rather reluctant knitting last month.  Mostly we just had houseguests and I was feeling overwhelmed and all too easily slipped into a semi-stupor in the evenings.  

That has changed.  I am entranced with my current knitting project, a cardigan, purchased as a kit from L'atelier in 2008.  The back consists of a simple stripe sequence. 

 

I love the colors and the squence of the stripes in the top photo. They make me happy.  This is my variation on the original however.  The kit came with the black yarn shown in the second photo and I did not like it at all.  I found the black far too demanding a partner with the more muted blues and greens so I ripped it back and banished that yarn.  Luckily I had a couple of skeins of the glittery red left over from some ancient project. Of course, this completely changes the spirit of the knitted fabric.  

 

As I look at the photos I see that the black really isn't as bad as my reaction warranted, but I respect my reaction.  These colors, with less contrast make me much happier and I look forward to knitting time sitting next to G in the evenings.  Hopefully by the time I finish this the weather will have turned a little cooler as well. And the reds make the sweater very autumn-appropriate.  Whereas the original colorway was named "April Showers" I'm thinking of naming this something like "September Garden".

 

Cabinets and Flooring and Tiles, Oh My!

Two weeks ago today, I was in Knoxville.  It was a quick trip.  I left my house at 6 AM Wednesday morning and was back home 37 hours later.  

I arrived at my meeting place early and thought I'd get an outfit photo, but no one was around in the parking lot so I perched the camera on the top of the car.  Then my phone rang.  So much for distance.  Just as my phone call ended, my real estate agent pulled up so I sureptitiously scooped my camera into my purse.

 

We spent the afternoon picking flooring and cabinetry and countertops.  Actually we spent the afternoon writing down all the options and talking to the builder, it didn't take me long to pick from the available options at all and I was determined to stick as closely to the standard options as possible.  I didn't quite manage that, but I came acceptably close.

 

I picked a pretty granite called Sapphire Blue for the kitchen countertops, and I opted to use the same granite in the master bathroom.  That was an upgrade.  I manged to find a cultured marble I liked for the guest baths, but not the master, so I went with the granite.  

 

It quickly became apparent that we were going to have to go to tile showroom to pick the tiles as they only had a couple of options at the model and none of them were acceptable.  I had hoped we would be able to do it all Wednesday, but it was not to be as the person we needed to meet at the tile showroom couldn't meet with us until Thursday morning. 

I had really wanted to go to my favorite museum  on Thursday morning and see an exhibit that was about to close but that was no longer possible.  Luckily by the time we got back to the office and I retrieved my car, it was only  a little after 4 PM.  I figured I had just barely enough time to drive to downtown Knoxville and get into the museum before they closed at 5.  I got lost, but I still made it.

 

I didn't have much time but I managed to see the exhibit I was looking for as well as take a quick turn around, not enough time to slowly absorb and commune with the works, but enough time to savor minute moments.  This piece, made of mylar, foam core board, intaglio etching, and graphite by Crystal Wagner, a part of the permanent collection, really captivated me as it seemed to hint at the spirit of the imagination and the boundaries between the "real" and fantasy, reminding me of the magic that can be found when we allow ourselves to dream and transcend the everyday, that it is possible to be both in the world and apart from it.

 

And then, it was done.  The museum was closing.  I was on my own again alone in the parking lot.  No one would be home yet at my step-daughter's house so I had some time.  I thought I would try the camera on the roof of the car trick again.  I was not particularly successful.  The sun was so bright I couldn't tell when the camera was about to go off.  I was so wired I couldn't stand still.    Actually I kind of like this photo, it captures the feeling of the entire trip, a little dizzy but fun.

 

Thursday morning we went to the tile showroom.  Once again I knew right away exactly what I wanted.  Once again it took longer to write everything down and work out the details than it did to make the actual choices.  And a good thing that because I just barely had time to grab a bite of lunch and head back to the airport.

I took photos to show G some of the selections I had made.  So far, these photos are my only link to my new home. The first picture shows the cabinets that will be in both the kitchen and the master bathroom.  Above the cabinet is the tile that will be used for the kitchen backsplash and the tub surround in the master bath. I thought I had taken a photo of the tile next to the granite as well, but apparently not.  Below the cabinet is the master bath flooring.  The kitchen floors will be wood.

 

This second photo shows the tile I chose for the fireplace surround in the living room.  This isolated image is the only concrete thing in that living room as it is the one space that remains completely shrouded in my imagination, a space undefined until I can at least see some floor plans and get my mental bearings. 

The View from the Kitchen Sink

On Saturday, Lisa posted photos of the view out the window from her kitchen sink and I was entranced by her lovely gardens, her flowers, and the connections she made.  Of course she was responding to yet other posts extoling the virtues of views from kitchen windows, but I have not yet visited those posts.

 

I've shown you the view from my kitchen window before, but here is this year's version.  It is a little bit overgrown.  I've been rather lax about weeding as my mind has already moved forward onto the preparing for what comes next;  weeding isn't really on my horizon at the moment.  Of course I am cognizant that once I am ready to put this house on the market a massive prepping of the garden will be required.  Besides, I like to tell myself that the weeds meet a need, providing shade and shelter to more delicate plants in this summer of unwelcome heat.

 

Standing at my sink this morning I realized that I will only be gazing on this view a few more months and I shall miss it.  I shall miss seeing the deer on the lawn in the evening despite the fact that there have many times when I have run out the front door shooing them away from from some flower or another.  I shall miss the early morning parade of the turkeys with their brood of little chicks.  The guard turkey always sits up high in the pine at the upper left corner of the photo, and if I wander out the door without having checked on their presence first, he lets out a frantic call and the turkeys scatter quickly, often before I even get the door completely closed behind me.  I will miss watching the rabbits and the woodchucks and the cavorting of the chipmunks on the stone walls.

 

All of this thinking about kitchen windows reminds me that there will be no kitchen window in my new house.  If there were I would only get a view of the neighbor's kitchen window a few feet away, and the thought of looking out the window into the eyes of another person standing at their own kitchen sink already makes me shiver just a bit.  Perhaps no window is better. I don't quite know how I will adapt to that yet.   I do know that when I am standing at that sink my back will be turned to the long open space consisting of the dining room, the sun room and the screened porch.  Perhaps I will put a mirror up on the wall above the sink so that I can be simultaneously looking forward and backward. Or is it backward and forward?