A day with Otto

I started tweaking my creative processes again, remembering cues and journeys. I think one of the reasons I take care of my two year old grandson, Otto, is to stay on that journey, taking cues from his creativity, his innocence, his wonderful wacky sense of two and a quarter year old humor. Thursdays fly by. Most days don't. Most days I struggle to stay focused at the computer.

Yesterday was a brute of a drive. I didn't even want to know what the windchill was, and yet there was a man standing in a ditch near Jordan with no car about him or anyone else. Wasn't sure what that was about. Perhaps he lost something. Maybe he was froze to death. Don't know. Just kept driving. Different than the drive four days earlier on Sunday on a return trip from the Cities. It was the worst driving experience I can recall in a long long while, Le Seur to St. Peter, a mere ten miles or so. Rain turned into freezing slush turned into ice skating rink highways. My little Saturn did an ice dance, eyeing first the ditch on the right hand side of the road, I'm sure the SUVers behind me were taking bets on when I was going to slide in, then righting itself, only to start slipping towards the ditch. There were many cars that had slid off: some in fields, one resting on a fence, a whole family in a black SUV sitting in deep snow next to a barn, and some nose down in deep ditches. Others were dented and resting against the median fence.

Not yesterday. Just cold. And wind.

And then Otto waiting at the door for me. He has a ritual. He runs up to the door when he hears me, and smacks his face as close to the class as he can. Then he laughs and pounds on the door.

Otto. Two and a quarter, good-sized boy.

The day just flits by with Otto. Granted he takes a three hour nap in the afternoon, but I try to hold on to precious moments in the morning and during lunch.

Otto is learning new words every day, starting to easily phrase things. When I ask him if he needs a diaper change, he pats his butt and says, all good, all good. When his Dad tried to put him to bed, he hugs my leg in desperation: my Grandma, he says, my Grandma.

not crazy, just messy

Once in grade school, I had a bloody nose. And although there wasn't anything monumental about that...the air was dry...it was winter...the fact that I didn't pay attention to all things evident in my life that shown like a picture window to my life to others, my thumb must have caught blood and held it there and attached itself to my paper where others saw it, said ewe and moved a little farther back on their chairs.

In old age, I am trying to pay attention to those things that might need more attention than others: my driving, after the accident last year and my insurance rates went up, not really my fault; my winter sweaters I find at Goodwill one bag for five dollars I am so proud but they don't last long, when I'm not careful.

In Catholic grade school, where the bloodied thumb print sent people scurrying, we spent eight years there and really didn't have a choice of friends. With eight or nine girls in a class, you brought everyone home to your house for birthdays and pre-holiday parties, new what their houses looked like as well, what kind of car they drove, how we all fit in the backseat going to church.

Two particular friends lived on a rented farm in a small house on a slope leading down to the pasture and drawers in their rooms so organized and color coordinated I was stunned upon seeing them at twelve. I still remember socks in one drawer, sorted by colors and all matching pairs, lined up one by one next to them like children on a playground where the nuns hovered round. Their sweaters, three on top of each other, and folded like they do in good stores in the Cities.

My sweaters drawers were like the sales counter in a second hand store: arms entwined arms and there was no pattern for colors.

Relativity, simple

A discussion with my daughter who writes as well, who is writing more now than she ever did in twenty years, even with a degree in English twenty years ago from MSU, when she kept a nineteen month blog on the journey of her husband's second round with cancer, and now that she's an MFA candidate at Hamline in creative writing non-fiction.

Do we sometimes create events in our life just to make our lives more interesting or have something to write about? At first it seems like an easy way to justify short-comings or moments or years of insanity or wild moments in ones life: that you had control of it and it was your choice.

I think when you write, there may be a case for that line of thinking. Whatever comes down the course of a day, it is an interesting journey, some days  more interesting than others. And it's a change in thought process that makes it so, not just happenstance.

Traffic can be boring. Sitting in traffic is twice as boring. But watching the people around you makes it a little more intersting: the three kids in the back of the car that at first seem subdued but as the time ticks past free themselves from restraints and become moving active time bombs throughout the car. When the mother's hands fly up, when she reaches for the paper towels you know her Starbucks has just hit the floor. And if it was one of those seven dollar Christmastime extravagant purchases they have going on right now at Starbucks, the children are lucky if they're not smacked.

Fifteen years ago I lived in California for five years, and on those occasions when I was stuck on the San Mateo bridge, every time I was on the bridge it seemed unless I was coming home on the red eye, the idea of observant in traffic became important and food for thought. That San Francisco was right over there, an arm reach away, was delightful. That small sail boats set sail on the bay every second and people lived water inspired lives there.

You get to know taxi drivers on the San Mateo bridge. They get to know you.

Books and more books, can't pass them by

Finally got one bookcase partially cleaned. There is detritus there, all those things one can't give up: books, small vases, odd art pieces, and plain old detritus gathered. I bring home books from everywhere and don't ever read them all. Some day, I say. Some day. Meanwhile, they are waiting there on bookshelves in the old apartment in the old hotel. I think I was always meant to live here, gathering dust and then dusting myself and my things off again.

Old wood on patio

I've quit mourning seasons, the older I get. Gave up the notion of trying to hold onto summer, the one that I love, good wine, unwrinkled face....although I had a new thought about that old adage this morning, if I won the lottery, of course, I'd travel the world and save the world and make my children wealthy, but I'd also, along with putting my breasts back where they belong, get a facelift...move than skin one inch back all around and waah laah I am thirty-five again, woo hoo.

I had all of these revelations this morning, clearing the patio of detritus and hanging onto those few things that will be useful next spring: some pots and planters, all the old soil dumped into the middle of the middle planter, how the leaves in a pile on cement are like artwork....reminiscent of both a mummy mummified and an oblong piece of patio art.

I have new eyes, at the cost of $$$ cataract removal. I see everything now. Scary. Even my inner sight is changing. I looked in the mirror last week after the second eye was removed of its cataract and thought dear lord, where did all those age spots come from. When did all those wrinkles decide to reside on my cheeks? I look like my mother, where for a long time, well into my thirties I was lucky enough to have skin that fooled time. With a facelift pulling back the skin an inch, maybe a half an inch, there might be youthful incognito magic tric skin again.

I didn't spend that much time thinking about skin. Took the above picture instead.

I can see clearly now

Back when I was twenty-four I memorized all the words to that song, all the lilting hopeful words backpacked for tomorrow or yesterday. Where are the years wasted but in that backpack, yes?

One week past the last cataract surgery, and I can see clearly. I don't know how long I had them, pesky cataracts, only that two years ago, maybe longer, light started bothering me painfully but not consistently. Growing older one excuses those nuances of aging, bad eyesight. Last summer past eyesight grew even more painful. I ventured to the optometrist in November, knowing in December another fourth year past a birthday and I'd have to take the driver's eye exam.

Now I'm not quite so sure that the driver's eye exam is what it should be. I passed, with the knowledge of cataracts growing. I was grateful to hold onto the license. I have older friends whose licenses are tentative from year to year. They still drive from house to drugstore to hearing place to liquor store. That will probably be my path too : )

But the optometrist, not the old guy from the Cities that I loved and trusted, but a newer cheaper brand at Wal-Mart issued the proclamation, cataracts, a few weeks earlier. What do I do? I asked.

Go home and think about it.

I did for six months, but by early summer could not drive at night, cursed the day vision.

And what did I do? Instead of pushing for early surgery, went on a road trip to Montana with my daughter, of course.

I could drive in the day fine. At least that's what we told ourselves. Could not drive at night. If Jen would have been impaired during night driving home, we would have been stuck at the side of the road.
The trip was in August. I had my first surgery September 17th.

Wonderful new eyesight in the left eye.

Upon entering, brush off the bugs

Everywhere, boxelder bugs. This time of year, prevalent annoyances: so many leavings, altered views out windows~from screened to glassed, bugs. Don't step on them, my grandson says. Them, are all dead spread out on the sidewalk in front of the main door. You can't help but step on them, can't help but crunch the dead. I think of the Hunger Games: rolling heads, dust of the deceased, things that will eat you. We don't have it so bad.

I like fall. I like the closing in of it, dusting off things, rearranging. The shorts and tees go into plastic. The sweaters come down, gratefully, and take the place of shorts and tees in drawers. The flowers, durable ones, are hauled inside to the little space there is for plants in a small apartment. Pumpkins are bought and adorn doorways, instead of boxelders. They are swept away. Gone is potato salad and brats and cold pasta with veggies. Soup cooks on the stove. Squash gets chopped into chunks. Apples sit in a pretty bowl begging for attention.

I hate football, hate those big guys going after the tall thin guys, hate the crunching and punching and all. I watch real games through fingers held in front of eyes, was not that sad when my oldest grandson broke his arm last week during ninth grade football and that fact benched him. I'm sorry for his broken arm. I'd rather it had happened climbing a tree or skiing or just rolling down a hill. But he was there for the taking, slim quarterback with a good arm. Not a dirty play, his father said. He was there with a camera to capture it. Cool, Noah said, stilly prone on the ground. You should put it on Facebook.

There are no boxelder bugs in the photo. There is the dry grass of summer, a Minnesota drought. There is the pediatrician's arms with her bandaged finger holding up Noah's rubber like arm. She has a ring on. He has a bandage on his finger, too. What's up with that, I wonder. His arm looks like those rubber things people stick out of trunks for pranks. A Halloween arm. Broke in two places, both lower arm bones.

When I go to visit, step over dead boxelders, the younger brother holding the door, the house operates like there is an invalid indoors. And there is, sort of. At fourteen, he'll heal fast. Not fast enough for the rest of football.

Sigh.