Of Autumn Bounties

My nose relishes the scents still -- the crisp tang of cut apples and cider, the warm kiss of cinnamon and cloves and butter baked on pumpkin and acorn squash, the dry musky whisper of fallen leaves.

I love autumn, always have. I become a child again, kicking and shuffling through leaves, craving the search for walnuts and chestnuts and the chance to once again stand on a chair in my grandmother's kitchen to help stir, or supervise the baking of seasonal goodies.

Those days are far behind me, but sweet memories linger on. My grandparents are old now, and age has not been kind. There is fear in me, fear of visiting and seeing them, and having that feeble ill health seared into my brain so that it wipes out the only fond memories of childhood. I fear it, because I still see the greatest supporter my family ever gave me, my maiden great aunt, lying in a hospital bed, devastated by cancer. I'm scared. I don't want to lose them.

I could go "home," but it was never really home to me at all.

Now frankly, the whole "Thanksgiving" thing doesn't mean squat to us. There's no glorified celebration of past wrongs committed in the name of conquest and expansion, no triumphant "let's massacre a bird" party for the sacrificial corpse. In my family, this is one of the few times of year when our massive extended family all has a day off and can get together. We're spread out all over the place, and on a daily basis, few of us are able to see the others.

For the largest portion of my life, Thanksgiving was held at the house of my paternal grandparents. All of the cousins, aunts, uncles, and gratuitous spouses or significant others would congregate and plan for the annual Christmas bash, to be held on Christmas Eve like clockwork, every year. We'd eat, drink, watch football, and compare notes on life and pretty much whatever other topic sprang to mind. These gatherings tended to get silly as well. Don't even ask me about food fights. The topic of my incredible aim comes up every damn time. I just don't want to hear about the green jello salad anymore, m'kay? There were wonderful long years of this tradition, even after my grandfather died.

And then Hubby and I moved away. This wasn't any small move this time. Hubby joined the Air Force and our newest family member, Uncle Sam, sent us off to Spokane, Washington, and Fairchild Air Force Base, this time several thousand miles from the yearly gathering. The first Thanksgiving was awful. We ended up in a tiny Chinese restaurant somewhere in downtown Spokane. Neither of us could face cooking or eating a "normal" meal. Christmas was dreadful, of course, and quiet. Again, there was something quite poignantly missing.

January brought us a new surprise, and I was pregnant. That was countered by the death of my grandmother a few months later, who quite possibly was never even able to understand the news that there was about to be another grandchild. This was one of the few times we crossed the miles to be home, and the funeral was worse than anything I could have imagined. I felt guilty for leaving her. I felt guilty for not being there when she died, or when she needed someone to talk to, or someone to be proud of. Worst of all, the only thing I had left of her was memories, and those had been clouded by the miles in between.

That Thanksgiving was only marginally better, for close friends took us under their wings. It was far removed from our "traditional" Thanksgiving, but I think it was easier than having to face the family event without her presence. Thing 1 helped in that aspect as well, since she kept us too busy to worry about what we were missing. Christmas was infinitely better with a baby in the house, but still, there was that sense of loss.

Hubby never really felt it. His family had never been all that close, whereas from the deepest parts of my memory, I could remember being with and knowing my cousins, and second cousins, and aunts and uncles on all sides of the family. I knew my grandparents, and great-grandparents, and their sisters and brothers and cousins. It was hard to explain to him, and I didn't think he was even able to grasp the concept.

He understands now, seeing through my eyes and my tears.

Why?

Poppie, the beloved grandfather that absolutely filled every day of my childhood, is suffering from an incurable handicap -- old age.

Over the last few years, I've watched as colon cancer took its toll, added to years of various melanomas on the man who couldn't be kept out of the sun and action if you strapped him down. Now, a stroke has added to that, and the once brilliant and outgoing man is quiet and subdued, and worst of all, slow. He doesn't go outside anymore. He now pays someone else to mow his lawn, where before he would scoff at anyone who didn't bother to work the dirt and grass themselves.

This is the man who, I am quite convinced, spent most of my childhood with me on his back. He'd carry me down the hills of our lakehouse (now sold, and that causes an ache as well that my children will never have the chance to enjoy it as I did) to where the blackberries grew wild. With me on his back, pointing imperiously at the choicest ripe berries, he'd bend and pluck them, knowing full well that the berry would never make it into the bucket. Hours of purple stained lips and fingers later, and he would carry me right back up that hill. His strength never flagged, though I always had to be put promptly to bed, exhausted.

He always had the talent for knowing precisely what would set my mother off, and thusly could finagle a way to achieve the most fun result while being able to placate her. She never really fell for the excuses, of course, but it made the sneaking a lot more fun to think that she did. I can't even count the number of times that we magically managed to just "fall into" the lake, or the number of times one of us had to go in after an item we had dropped. Well, after all, while we were in there, we were already wet and might as well swim -- right?

There was real magic to be found in his gardens. Poppie could grow absolutely anything, and would show us, still covered with dirt and sweat, how to pluck the food item of choice directly from the vine so that we could eat it right there in the garden. "Poppie" even came from there, me being small and impressionable, and seeing a huge field of glowing red poppies. The poppies, and the roses, and the squash, and even the wild blackberries that were somehow not so wild once he had built a cage for the vines to dance across were all a vivid part of my childhood.

I am watching my childhood grow old, and the child inside me is weeping.

It is hard to face the inevitable loss of a loved one. It is even harder when you are slowly watching their decline. My children will never know the fullness of this wonderful man, except through their mother's eyes. They will never know what it was like to be eight, and suddenly decide that the top of a huge persimmon tree was the perfect place to learn to fly -- knowing that He would be there below to catch me when I fell.

Every time I see my grandparents, there is this horrid fear that it will be the last time that I will hold them, and the last time that my children will have to learn who they are. I can't put the camera down anymore. It's become an extension of me, whenever they are around, but not even the best film can compare the dreams and memories that I hold.

It's a bittersweet harvest this year.

The Sounds of Violence

There was an Incident yesterday afternoon at a Dallas high school. Several kids got into a tussle ... and apparently one called an older friend (not in school) who showed up with his car.

He promptly drove that car up onto the lawn and ran over at least 12 kids. Ran Them Down.

Thing 1 was watching the news. It scared her. "Mommy, is that going to happen at my school?"

I don't blame her for being scared. The problem, unfortunately, is that it can happen anywhere, anytime.

In 1994, an airman discharged for psychiatric unsuitability returned to Fairchild AFB with an automatic weapon and walked into the base hospital. The hospital was outside of the gates, so there was no check point. The hospital was full of civilians, dependants ... children.

One of the first to die was the man that had helped me out of a horrible post-natal depression. Imagine having the one person you're used to calling being on the list of the dead.

My husband worked in that hospital, in the pharmacy. He was shot at repeatedly (and luckily missed) as he bailed and went to help the wounded. A little girl died in his arms as he and other techs tried to save her.

Thing 1 (1 year old at the time) and I were supposed to be there at the hospital, and would have been in the lobby at the time the gunman had walked through if I hadn't had a weird feeling and cancelled our appointments for that day.

I, along with several other wives with spouses at the hospital, sat glued to the television in horror. My husband was lucky enough to sneak a call out to me to let me know he was alive, so I had the only information from the inside among us.

For months afterward, we couldn't sleep in the same bed. His nightmares were so bad that I would wake up with bruises all along my side from his thrashing around. He totally dropped out of life. Full blown post-traumatic stress syndrome.

This was 1994. I'm just now getting him back. The sound of a car backfiring would send him to the ground. After a while, it did it to me, too.

People don't remember this shooting, unless they were involved. When I explain my reactions to certain things, it always gets a shocked expression in response. News coverage of these events has drastically changes in the last few years. Now everyone hears about them.

Every time another story hits the news, I cry. It's hard, when it's happened to those you know. When it happens to others, you share the pain, knowing what they're going through. It scares the hell out of you.

It makes you angry.

Desensitized, my ass. I'm more aware of it now than ever, because it DID happen to me. You can't forget, it's just not possible.

It hurts, and it's stupid, and it makes me mad.

You go on for the children, hoping and praying that you can all make a difference so that it doesn't happen again.

Kid for Sale: Cheap

Thing 2 enjoys causing our hearts to race in fear. She's skilled at this hobby, having a great deal of practice in the field. She set a new precedent today.

Now, see if you can figure this one out: a sealed 2 bedroom apartment. No doors or windows opened. Yet, this enterprising 3 year old manages to TOTALLY and completely vanish. Silent. No giggling to give her away. No movement. No PRESENCE.

Usually, you can tell if there's someone IN a space. Somehow she manages to just put this little psychic shield or some such nonsense around herself. She's a null spot when she wants to vanish.

It's gotten quiet in the house. Too quiet. Quiet and children mean trouble. Total silence and children mean it's time to panic. I look around to see why. Thing 1 is reading a book by herself, unmolested.

Thing 2 is missing. Totally missing.

The three of us, her sister included, spend a good frantic 10 minutes trying to find her. We look in closets. We look under beds, behind doors, under furniture, in laundry baskets, in bedclothes. No Thing 2. We keep right on looking, getting more frantic by the minute.

There's complete silence. Nothing to give the child away.

The mind starts to snap at that point with the weight of What Ifs: what if she climbed into a space and can't breathe? What if she climbed and got ahold of someone's meds and managed to get them open? (there's no such thing as Heddaproof that doesn't involve six different deadbolts, timelock tumblers and retinal scans) What if ... what if ...

Panic.

It's Mommy that finds Evil Thing 2 at last, catching the gleam of an eye in the shadows. She's managed to work herself into an area in our bedroom near a box that had blankets piled on it. Beside the box had been a stack of Things That Need to go Into the Closet. Without disturbing them, she got behind them and tucked herself in.

We called her and called her. She ignored us entirely. It was a big game to Thing 2.

Daddy swats her. She acts like she's been killed. Mommy scoops her up, hugging her tight enough to smother said child, explaining why what she did was wrong. Thing 2, still mortified by the swat, clings to Mommy and sobs. Mommy, exhausted and in pain and still scared half to death, clings back.

Child for sale. Cheap. Payments accepted.

Ride of the Raging WTF?

I got an interesting email today from someone that had stumbled over one of my websites. The article in question was written MANY years ago, in response to some roleplaying partners wanting some background on one of my characters. While full of lots of fact, there was a great deal of opinion thrown in as to how that character became what she was, etc. It was, in fact, part of that characters website.

It was so long ago, that really, I'd forgotten all about it.

Till today. I thought I'd share this letter with you, since it tickled me to pieces.

*******

""Ride the Raging Host" was in-formative, but it wasn't as objective as it needed to be. For instance, your personal vendettas with Christianity was of little value to my paper. I enjoyed your writing very much, but please, for the sake of college student every-where, strive to remain OBJECTIVE next time. Opinions should not be presented as factual content.

Sincerely,

---------
Defender of the Faith

*******

Whoa. Um, college students are using my paper on the Wild Hunt for reference material?? Cool. As the paper was never meant to be objective, I kept giggling when I read it. I want to apologize to him, simply because of that inherent guilt complex thing I have ... but how do you explain the origins of that paper to him without making him feel like an idiot?

What's more ... how in God's name did a college student find that paper to use for reference? *I* don't even know where it is anymore.

Wild, man.

Yesterday's high temp hit 111. In September. Broke all sorts of heat records for the area. At 8 last night, when they were announcing this, it was still 105. Unfreakinbelievable.

Another doctor's visit in a few hours. At least I'll be able to get my painkillers renewed.

Sigh.

Thing 1: "Mommy, there's this boy at school ..."
Me: (thinking, Oh God, not already) " And ....?"
Thing 1: "Well, can I take my sister to school with me?"
Me: (now, WTF?) "Um, why, honey?"
Thing 1: "Because he was being mean to me and calling me names, and I told him that if he didn't quit, I was going to bring my sister to school to kick his butt because she's EVIL."
Me: ::jaw on floor, caught between laughter and horror::

Mind you, the sister in question is 4 years younger than Thing 1.

Oh god. It starts.

Reading my husband's latest journal entry sparked off the huge mental hammer of Guilt once again. It's not a pleasant emotion by any means or stretch of the imagination, and unfortunately, it's something I've become most painfully accustomed to over the last year. Guilt has been a near-constant companion for me, over something that isn't my fault and that I can't control.

While we're no longer painfully poor, we still struggle ... and I continue to sit at home. My contributions to our welfare are minimal, and the guilt quota increases. At least I do have a paying job right now, and that's what really allows us to have any extras at all. It's still not enough for me, and the guilt keeps on rising, and again there's very little that I can do to make it go away.

My health keeps deteriorating. I need to go back to the doctor, yet I'm almost to the point that I was three years ago, where I had to be bleeding out the eyes and ears and nose, and I'd still say "No, no, I'm all right, I don't need to go to the doctor." I'm scared, man. I'm scared of what they're going to tell me this time ... or next time, or the next. Each visit seems to add something else to the scorecard that states firmly that my body's warranty has run out.

I've lived with asthma and migraines for a while. I was used to that. I was used to the chronic tendonitis in my right arm that would occasionally render my hand useless for a week or so at a time, then drift off into dull aches of reminder.

Then I lost the use of my left hand, ignoring the symptoms of trouble until it was too late and the only solution was the massive surgery that rebuilt my arm and required most of my muscles and nerves to be removed and reordered. The nerves still haven't regenerated totally, and I do have some permanent loss in that arm, along with the oh-so-pretty scar. Then my feet went, chronic conditions that keep coming back just when I think I've got another problem under control.

And just when we thought that was gone, my blood pressure skyrocketed. It's controlled now, thanks to medication. Hypoglycemia, another condition I was used to, added another realm of fun to the equation when my triglycerides soared to incomprehendable levels thanks to my medications and I spent several months on a most unpleasant diet. Unfortunately, the nagging fatigue, aches, and depression that I'd been ignoring for the last year kept building. I, of course, kept ignoring them.

Hell, I had tonsilitis again ... for eight months straight, before they removed my tonsils for the second time. Apparently they missed some the first go-round, or I've developed the world's most useless superpower --- Amazing Regenerating Tonsils. Whee. Mmm, yummy, eight months of expensive antibiotics that don't do a damn thing but make me power barf, yeah buddy, that's what I want some more of.

Of course, when we thought that was settled and done with, and I should be getting better, that was when the fatigue and aches and ... fibromyalgia. Goody. A chronic pain syndrome that never goes away, has no cure, and can only be treated with varying degrees of success. They aren't sure that it's all that's wrong with me, either, and so every trip to the doctor involves me walking out of there bruised and feeling like a pincushion.

I can't help but feeling like it's nothing but excuses.

I still am not *really* working. I'm not *really* contributing to my family's welfare. There are days when getting out of bed is an enormous undertaking, much less doing "complex" things like .... doing dishes, folding clothes, picking up toys, making beds. Little things like this are taken for granted by most people, but for me, they're quite often more difficult that trying to climb K2 without any gear -- in other words, impossible.

And I feel, no, drown in guilt. It's not fun to realize that you're worth more to your family dead than alive.

I'm sorry, honey.

The Queen of ... Blah

While folding laundry (a task involving much swearing and agony, but that's another post), I discovered that I have become exceptionally detail-oriented.

For instance ... there are certain things about clothes that make me refuse to purchase them. Clothing that needs to be ironed every time it's worn does not need to belong to a 7-year old. Collars that refuse to lie down even when still on the rack at the store do not go home.

Yet, while folding clothing, I found these very items in the stacks. This annoys me. I think it's revenge from my mother, to be perfectly honest, for all of the clothes that I just had to have that involved so much effort. It's really ridiculous, though, and I see why it annoyed her so much at the time when I just HAD to have that dry-clean only whatever.

For a few moments, I considered pulling the same stunt my mother had, and hiding the offending articles of clothing. The moment passed, and I let the urge go.

Another discovery gave me a mild case of the giggles, even while groaning in pain over the whole folding trauma. I am The Queen of Khaki. Honest. I had no idea that my wardrobe had become so subtle, so mild, so ... boring. If it wasn't an earthtone in some muted shade, I didn't pull it out of the basket for me.

I can't decide if I've grown up, given up, or stopped caring.

A pin drop

Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.

Have you ever stopped and just ... sat for a few minutes, and contemplated silence? Not just the lack of noise, per se, but true and absolute silence?

It's quiet in the house right now, but by no means silent. I am the only human awake, yet there's a soft house noise serenade whispering in my ears: the watery song of the fish tank filter, gurgling away, the occasional snuffling sounds of a happy cat blissfully gorging on catnip, the hum of the refrigerator, the melodic whir of the ceiling fan.

It's quiet, but by no means silent.

I've no idea what I would do with complete silence. To me, it would be somewhat overwhelming. I can understand how isolation chambers work now after considering all of this. The total lack of sensory input ...

Thank you, no.

What would you do with a few moments of true silence?