is there any more pie?

Yesterday afternoon’s conversation:

Banjo Man:  I’m going to town to the Post Office.  Do you want to ride along?

Me:  Mmmm…no, ’cause then I’d have to brush my hair.

We are in Week 9 of isolation.  Self-care has hit a new low.  This morning I wrote “shower” on my To Do list.

Last night’s conversation:

We were watching a ridiculous Bachelor spin-off called “Listen To Your Heart”.  One of the young female contestants has a habit of wrinkling her nose when she smiles and she was smiling a lot.

Banjo Man:  I think I’ll start wrinkling my nose like that.

Me:  That would be a pretty big wrinkle.

We spent the next two hours wrinkling our noses at each other and laughing uproariously.

Happy Mother’s Day to the lovely women in my family and to my much-loved friends.

I hope all the love and happiness you deserve comes your way.  Especially today.

An old friend sent me this picture of my parents last week.  It took my breath away.  Why?  My mother’s smile.  I realized I hadn’t seen her that happy since my father died.

1991

Because it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share some of my mother’s advice:

“Put your husband first because your children grow up and leave you.”  She firmly believed, like Dr. Laura, that you should be your husband’s girlfriend.  My father was always the most important person in her world.

“A woman needs her own money.”  This one had a lot to do with her love of shopping.  Her stamina in a shopping mall was positively Olympian.  I never had my “own” money until I started selling books, but when I opened my first checking account I realized Mom was right.

“Tell your husband what you must, but don’t tell him everything.”  I’d heard this one many times, but it was especially appropriate twenty years ago when I was obsessing over buying a fancy sewing machine.  I’d brought my mother along–she never refused an outing and had been promised lunch afterwards–and, exasperated with my dithering, pointed out that my husband didn’t need to know exactly what the machine cost.  She also declared it was about time I did something for myself.  I bought the machine and we went to lunch.

“Put that baby to bed and have the evening with your husband.”  This was advice she gave when her adored first grandchild was a toddler.  She believed that children should go to bed early and their parents should have time together.  Marriage always came first.

Last year’s Mother’s Day was, well, miserable.  Banjo Man and I knew I had cancer, but we didn’t know how bad it was and didn’t want to tell my mother or the kids until we had a biopsy and a definitive plan to deal with it.  I was in pain.  The rain pelted down.  Denny’s, where we’d gone for breakfast, was packed with hungry people.  My mother wasn’t in the best frame of mind either.  I’ll admit it was hard to pretend to be cheerful that morning.  We had plans to go out for dinner with Barb and Rod later, but we cancelled.  Enough was enough and we knew we couldn’t pretend that everything was fine much longer.

And it has been quite a year.

But today?  The sun is shining, but the temperature is only 43 degrees.  Another “Six Feet Sunday” with Barb and Rod is not in the cards this afternoon.   I’m going to bind that Corona quilt and start hand stitching while watching tv tonight.

I wish you all a peaceful day and send my love.

There is a container of three-week-old coleslaw in the refrigerator.

I have eaten toasted-cheese-with-fig-jam sandwiches at least twenty-one times in the past seven weeks.

Sometime it is impossible to remember when I last washed my hair.

I don’t let myself get out of bed in the morning until I’ve figured out what day it is.

I have worn the same cardigan sweater for seven weeks.  Every day.  There are probably three hundred pieces of thread stuck on it.  I like it that way.

Watching any kind of news on television makes me nauseous.  I still listen to local talk radio, but I yell at it a lot.

I am recording every episode of HUNTING NAZI TREASURE.

We miss our police and drug-dealing friends from five seasons of THE WIRE and we still amuse ourselves by talking like street thugs.

Every single day we count the hours until six o’clock when we can sit on the couch and watch tv.  This is sad, but it’s important to have something to look forward to, right?

I have stopped counting how many rolls of toilet paper are in the basement and have started counting the days until I get on a plane.

After this is over I want to go out to eat every night for the rest of my life.

My mother’s happy place.

Monday was the funeral and I really don’t want to write about it.  Aside from it being a cold, gray, rainy and windy morning, it was certainly not the funeral I’d pictured for my mother.  I’d always envisioned the entire family–three generations– gathered together, along with our special friends, to cry and laugh and comfort each other with funny stories and memories.  I had the photo dvd ready to play in the background.  I knew what music my mother would like.  I thought there would be hugs.  Wine.  Food.  A bittersweet celebration of a life well lived.

Severe restrictions due to Covid-19 prevented all of that.  And let me tell you, it hurt.  A lot.

I feel so sad for other people who have had to bury loved ones during this time.  I cannot imagine the pain that they’re going through.  Not many would have the “she lived a long and happy life” feelings given to an 94-year old woman.  Ours was a simple grief.  While so many others are not.

How are large families coping when only five are allowed to mourn together and one of those is the minister or priest?

How is comfort given and received when people have to stand six feet away and aren’t allowed to hug?

My heart breaks for everyone.  I don’t know how people are dealing with it.  I was absolutely devastated despite my own loss being an expected and inevitable one.

I’m pretty damn sad right now, but I’m sad for everyone who has had to deal with the lonely passing of someone they love.

This is a cruel time.

I hugged my daughter Monday.  Yep.  Flew caution to the wind and hugged her as hard as I could.  

It helped.

The good old days.  Not one mask!   And no social distancing.