What’s changed:
My nest is empty– girls are gone. Both of them. All two of them.
Cola is taking advantage of me,–whenever I eat ring baloney or cheese or summer sausage or ice-cream. I think it’s because I’m alone. It’s that dog face of his. And he knows just how to use it.
Premium carpal tunnel on the right. Regular carpal tunnel on the left. The numbness doesn’t bother me as much as this miserable forearm pain. I don’t get that, but gallons of milk are near impossible to handle. I’ve dropped a few cups of coffee. Last week on campus, I watered the sidewalk when I dropped a cup of water.
I think about my mom quite a bit. I’m surprised how much her dying (not so much that she’s gone) bothers me. Now and then I see her face after she died; it haunts out of nowhere–surprisingly small, smooth, her mouth a small O and dead (sorry) still. It makes my heart sink every time. I feel overwhelmingly sad even writing about it. I feel bad for her, and I feel bad bad bad that she slowly lost her mind over the years and especially bad during those moments of awareness, when she’d say “I can’t do it,” or “My mind isn’t right” or with her hand on her head, dis-paring, “Oh, what am I going to do?”
(see: http://sarahvd.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/chunky/ )
Travis said every time he came home, as recently as last fall, long after Dad and I stopped witnessing it or paying attention, she would say “You got to get me out of here,” or “I’m so glad you’re here, now get me out of here” (the nursing home), or back when she first went it and Travis came home, she would point at everyone and say, “All these people are crazy; get me out of here.” It’s so weird because I would swear she never spoke that way with us, or I’ve forgotten. Except for that one time (link above). It must have been more than one time.
It’s terrible to look back on. Far worse to look back on than it was to go through it. I may have to think twice before sitting bedside with a dying mother again.
I quit smoking. I haven’t written a word in years. Unless this counts.
I vowed to do far less with teaching this fall, allow myself more time for myself, write, live a little, you know--let go. I’d been keeping a journal on how I would let go. I’d been researching it. I’d been reading The Tao. I want to say I’ve been researching it, but now I’m so busy with teaching I’ve had little time for research or journaling. In fact, I have never had anything backfire so badly in my life. I’ve never been so obsessed with teaching, never spent so many hours a day prepping and reading essays, monkeying with Blackboard, uploading and downloading shit and reading small assignments. I told myself I did not need to read everything, all the process work, the log entries, but I can’t stop. I’m hung up and obsessed with reading all of it (even though I can’t read all of it, because there is not time), especially the brief weekly log entries, the one thing I told myself I absolutely did not have to read all of. . . just check them now and then, and worst of all, I’m spending half days just struggling to remain organized because I am forever disorganized. I told myself to keep weekly course plans, keep an attendance record on my computer, keep all my docs in their proper folders, and all folders in their proper folders. What a fucking nightmare that’s all turned out to be. I’m obsessed with keeping on top of all that crap, and can’t get on with the business of working until everything is in its proper place, which seems to take hours.
Worse yet, I come home, and have to clean the damn house, make sure everything here is in its proper place before I can relax and start reading the blessed log entries on Blackboard.
I don’t know if this is about having an empty nest, about having a dead mother, about Michcon Dick having disappeared (or have I disappeared him?)
It all makes me want to have a cigarette.
