Tattoo Equivalent Revelations in Everyday Ramblings

This is the winter version of the beautiful garden I went birding at a few weeks ago. It looks (and feels) just like this here now. We have an air stagnation advisory in place and they keep extending it. The particulate matter in the air, well…it is about time for some rain.

Except not until Wednesday afternoon, okay? After making my presence visible discreetly all over various and sundry social media sites yesterday it was liking the cheerful picture of him and his three grown children all visiting for the Christmas holiday on Facebook that got Mr. Fine China’s attention. He pinged me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk on New Years Day. He has one of those walks around Portland/Vancouver books I enjoy so much with all the interesting tidbits about buildings and history and such.

Of course I want to go for a walk with him on New Years Day!

I would have walked any way. I do most days. Now I will have company. He not only doesn’t live in Portland, he doesn’t live in Oregon. He lives and works across the river in Washington. Up where Mr. Finch was at the VA hospice facility all those months.

I have been thinking about Mr. Finch a great deal this holiday season, about the unusual intimacy of our last year together. When I posted my new profile picture on Facebook last weekend, his Long Lost Love, A. from Germany liked it. That is just so odd for me. I know she misses him, or at least her idea of him and it is not like I have anything against her really, she is a very nice person, and he was wild about her, but this knowing is one of the awkwardness’s of social media.

Looking at some photographs I took those last months I know everything about every piece of clothing he has on, what edges were worn, what was new, what was his favorite, how he smelled, how he moved, what he said, how he said it. Last night I slept in the long john shirt I bought for him that he wore a lot the last three months because it was warm. Warm for him when he had no fat left and warm for me now because it gets cold here at night and I am carrying 40 lb. less than I was this time last year.

Of course it is in the nature of our lives as humans to make connections and to move on even if it seems impossible when one is in the middle of an unfolding loss.

We carry these losses with us into these opening connections as new insight and wisdom. I can see the grief so faintly etched in Mr. Fine China’s face in the photos from this last week.

My guess is that as we embark upon this renewed friendship that we will both be more tolerant of each other’s foibles, our significant difference in interests, the overlay of betrayal and hurt that we were both feeling before from painful prior breakups softened by time.

And I am not working for him now. :)

So perhaps I can be a little less circumspect. And a little more me.

I am glad I told him about the cancer.

He doesn’t, however, know about my tattoo.

I expect he will have tattoo equivalent revelations of his own and I am most interested in hearing those.

When I was telling the women at my Circle about this story about reconnecting with Mr. Fine China last Monday, J., who had a house full of grandchildren decorating the tree and spent the day making moussaka and is learning how to play the cello at 79, sighed and said “I have nothing that interesting to report” and I laughed and said “Yeah, but you have the gift of normalcy. The life of your family in the middle of being exactly what it is.”

We rail at all the things that those closest do that drive us absolutely nuts, but it could all turn in a second. I am grateful that I know this now and savor all the flavors available of family life. The consternation, the quick little flares of anger, the shared worldview and that deep relaxation that really only occurs when we are in the presence of that from which we came and have made for ourselves.

Oh my, one does get reflective here at the end of the year, doesn’t one? Back to work tomorrow for me.