So much for the stories we tell ourselves.
Over the course of the six weeks of recovery following my fall and subsequent surgery, any claims to orderliness, perhaps even to organization, at least in terms of my immediate physical surroundings, fell apart. So much for the idea that if one has systems in place, they will keep everything running during the bad times — for a week or two, perhaps; for a month and a half, not really.
Of course as you know from previous posts, the vegetable garden ramped into production about half-way through the healing process, and much cooking and canning was taking place. This took all my energy, perhaps more than I should have allowed, because there were also days where I would collapse, spent, on the sofa, unable to knit even, much less vacuum. Pig-headed determination has its good side, but even determination needs to be curbed at times.
Just as my energy levels were becoming more consistent, Tikka, my cuddly pup and travel companion, took a turn for the worse. Truthfully she had been failing for some time and I had been in denial. We spent much of the weekend following my last blog post cuddling, although it soon became evident that her time was up. The end actually came very quickly, for which I am grateful. She was at least 11 years old, but truthfully, she could have been older. I will never know. Just as I will also never really know if it was I who rescued her or she who rescued me.
The last two weeks have proven to be not so much a time for thinking or creative exploration, but instead, a time for mindless expenditures of energy.
What do you call spring cleaning when it takes place in August? When it takes place in an already upside-down year? A resettling perhaps? In some sense perhaps even a retrenchment, although I am taking liberties with that word. It has been over a year since I moved into this house, but barely a year since the work of contractors was finished. One year: six months of the busy normalcy of my former life, a life that now seems distant enough to feel almost foreign; six months of a world in the process of being transformed, although I am not sure we are quite ready to admit that yet.
Truthfully there seems to be a lot of denial and magical thinking going on. I am no better than anyone else on that front.
I cleaned the house from top to bottom. Well I haven’t tackled the basement level yet, but that is next on the agenda. There were books to shelve, so I dusted and reorganized the bookshelves. That should be an annual task anyway. The same for the kitchen. As I’ve discovered a revitalized love of cooking, I’ve noticed a need to reorganize and regroup, to accommodate my own evolving priorities and waves of energy. Cooking for one is not like cooking for two. Cooking in my 60s is not the same as cooking in my 30s or even my 50s. Luckily for me there has been a lull in garden production during the past two weeks, just enough produce for daily meals and nothing more, but that is about to turn. When it happens I will be prepared.
No promises here. It seems I am perfectly happy to assign myself two or three tasks to accomplish in a day but also perfectly content to spend long hours sitting and reading, to allow a cat to sleep in my lap, perhaps to knit again.
All in all, I think that is a good place to be, doing what needs to be done but content to leave it at that, willing to accept the simple satisfaction that life as it is lived is enough. At the moment it is raining. My book and my knitting call.
