Unexpectedly, In Passing in Everyday Ramblings

It feels like flower photography season has started here. This is from yesterday. I got shots of snowdrops and those small deep blue iris in a clump as well as a nice shot of the mountain with a floating layer of cloud near the top. A gift for those climbers summiting.

Since the ice, snow, lockout extravaganza last month I have been getting a bit agoraphobic. I have tendencies that way anyway. I had an unpleasant encounter with a big dog that lives across the breezeway and a public bus ride full of seriously unruly 5th graders a few days ago. So…I am hesitating to go out. I will need to get over this in the next month as gardening season is fast approaching.

I think this has something to do with feeling both burdened and alone. I have had this hesitancy enough times before to know it is a cycle with a beginning a middle and an end. And seasonal allergens are in the air as well, so finding the right antihistamine that doesn’t raise my blood pressure is a challenge. Last year I settled on a homeopathic remedy so maybe I will try that again.

At least Carlo is doing well. When I was teaching on Friday all of a sudden, a toy mouse went zooming under my chair. He is quite playful. And a bit of a bully. After his last meal of the day, he goes and sits on top of his scratching tunnel, which is under my workstation and expects me to get the worm on a string toy out for him to play with. It is adorable.

He is struggling a bit still with anxiety. But aren’t we all? He is healthy, though and it has been a long time since I lived with a healthy cat, and I am grateful.

We both clearly miss his brother. Carlo can’t get the food cans open without his brother, so I don’t need to use the childproof locks on the cabinets anymore, but he knows that bapping on the cabinet doors to open them drives me a bit insane and he also did that Friday morning during class.

Yet another reason to take breaks and get outside regularly so he doesn’t take my presence for granted. Not to mention the health benefits of full spectrum light.

I am not depressed. I am enjoying many things and feeling things fully. It is just that I have taken on these new responsibilities that are unfamiliar and I make mistakes while learning and interacting with new to me people. Plus, I am taking on creative challenges. And it would be nice to have the kind of companionship to talk those things through with.

It is so true that family and friends lighten the load.

Now that I am retired and of, hmm, mature years, I am even more picky about what that companionship is made of. The Princess is in the house.

On Thursday I had a genuine moment of connection with the guys. There were only 7 of us, one other woman, three painters all sitting together at the end of the table talking about legacy and what to do with all the artwork sitting around the house and all the other people’s artwork we had, family members, parents, and the conversation got to be about the conversations we have with artwork across time.

I told them about taking Mr. Finch to the Portland Art Museum for the last time. We knew that we were doing a tour of his favorite local places before he went into hospice for good. He was standing there looking at his favorite landscape painting from a century ago and as I was giving him a moment, I turned back to see him silently waving goodbye.

It was touching to see and hear all these old men responding to that.

So, it is not like I am deprived of human contact or the richness of it; it is just I miss the mundane contact that we so take for granted when we have it, about the weather, what’s for dinner, who did what in the neighborhood.

And the adorable thing the handsome bully cat does that makes one’s heart melt, unexpectedly, in passing.

Last updated February 11, 2024