beeconcise

Finally, a day to call my own, mostly because I have a car in the garage with a flat tire.  Spent some time out in the yard this morning, wearing a warm jacket and looking for signs of Spring. I found them, too, giving my heart a full boost of hope for things to come: new buds on the lilac, the pussy willow, the Japanese maple and the grape vines on the trellis outside my office window; new green leaves on the ivy, the raspberries and the holly hocks;  and of course buds on the ash, maple and birch trees. I’ve told the asparagus it’s OK that they have not yet poked their tender little heads through the soil. We can wait for them when Spring is in full bloom, about the time the tulips and the grape hyacinths appear.

Waiting has been the nature of my life since mid-November when my elderly mom, at 94, began having one problem after another where she lived at a lovely assisted living facility on Spokane’s South Hill:  swollen feet, wounds on her shins where another resident ran into her with a wheelchair; loss of appetite; extreme dehydration, fatigue and renal failure, with paramedics taking her to the hospital on a Saturday afternoon,  and then her sudden discharge Monday morning, in a wheelchair, to a skilled-nursing facility in the valley, close to our home, for a ‘long-term placement’ in early December. I asked the RN there exactly what this meant. She told me, quite frankly, “This is her new home.”

We engaged a mover, packed up her belongings, transferred some to her new room which also came with a roommate, a big surprise to us and to my mother. We gave away her furniture, having accepted other pieces along the way into our own home as she moved a number of times from an apartment here to an independent living facility, then to an assisted living facility and finally to the skilled-nursing facility. This is the last phase of her life,  with an alarm on her bed if she tries to get up alone, and placement into a wheelchair with only random ventures with her walker, always accompanied by the physical therapy staff.

We are grateful that she’s safe now, hopefully with a low risk of falling, but at the same time saddened to see our mother, grandmother and aunt in a wheelchair. She wears a ‘clothing protector’ at meals. The most distressful part of this for me, her daughter, is that it does not bother her. I’ve even come to accept it as part of the necessary plan. She follows the rules ~ gets up when they say, showers with assistance when they say, and eats three meals a day when they say. They are loving and caring, with excellent medical assistance so far. We are blessed that she can receive such care as needed. They chart her food intake when she is not eating well. She’s down to 98 pounds now.

She’s begun to repeat phrases until visitors, including myself, must leave.  You can only hear a loved one say she had ‘hoped the sun would come out today ‘ a dozen times in five minutes before you know it’s simply time to go, and that she is probably not really present with you.  She still calls me Ruthie, and reminds me of a little girl now, so intent on wearing only dresses and not slacks and tops.  As she smooths down her dress skirt I am reminded of my granddaughter, Jamie, who around age three announced that she only wanted to wear twirley dresses, and she did, too. Now my little mom is wearing dresses, socks and black shoes, which reminds me of Mary Janes.  It seems as if I am looking at a little girl all over again, except in a big girl dress and in a wheel chair.

I am blessed that I could give her a Valentine this week, with a personal note that said, ‘I will love you beyond forever.’  She smiled, called me Ruthie, and told me that was really nice, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she understood what I was saying. I was giving her permission, whenever she chooses, to make her leap into forever, with my love and my blessings.

We’ve shared this moment, and I know, even though she forgets a lot of the past, that she remembers this. She has put the card on the small cabinet across from her bed. There it sits with its three red sparkling hearts on the front … hers, mine and my brothers, I think to myself.  She knows she has been loved.  She knows she will be remembered. She knows she has mattered. What more can any of us ask of this life?

So we continue for now.  I join her for lunch frequently, take clean laundry several times a week, go for the 2:30 popcorn snacks or root beer floats, and have just discovered they sometimes have wine and cheese snacks, as well. She loves Candy Bingo and Quarter Bingo. Loves to sit in the sun. Loves to sit and watch people. I take my smart phone and share photos of the family when they appear on Facebook, or when I have a new photo of my own to share.  No matter whose photo she sees, she thinks it’s her great grandson, Asher, our 6 year old who lives in Georgia, and her face breaks into a huge smile.

She’s like a little girl now in her dresses, socks and black shoes. She’s happy to be doing the things she does. She does not mind the wheel chair or the clothing protector at meals. She eats very little, saying when nudged to eat more, “I’ve had all I want,” and I know from the look in her eyes that she means life as well as her meal. And so we wait together, for the Beyond Forever moment to take place.  I feel blessed to accompany her on this journey.

October in Spokane has to be my very favorite time of the year.  Yet my husband keeps reminding me that I say the same thing at the first snowfall, the first tulips poking through the ground in the Spring, and oh, those summer asparagus. All in all, I guess it’s just enough to be grateful that we live in a full four-seasons community. Our Cul de Sac’s name is Yale Court, and yet every maple tree in this court is bright red. I decided today it should be called Sugar Maple Court.

Even our Ash tree in the back yard, which our little Georgia grandson thinks is named after him because his name is Ash, is usually a deep burgandy this time of year, but lo and behold, this year it’s a brilliant red-orange.  Who knew a tree could change its colors, from burgandy to red-orange?

If our tree can do this, why can’t I?  Why can’t I become a finished novelist, rather than a wanna-be novelist?  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll change my colors as well.  Just yesterday I figured out how to put my beeconcise blog onto my Pinterest board.  Am I excited?  You bet. And just a few minutes ago I saw the same posting on my Facebook wall.  Who knew that could happen?  I know … any person the least bit technical, but you see, I am not usually in such categories.  I leave that to the techies of the world.

I am happy that I do not have anything to do with the trees changing colors, either.  I just leave it up to that great power in the sky, and all sorts of magical things happen. This alone fills me with wonder and hope.

I love this picture of my daughter, Allison, and have always called this picture A Woman in Balance. Everytime I see this picture it reminds me to keep myself in balance too, and there are times in every woman’s life when this is easier said than done.

I’ve posted here sometime this summer about reading Debbie Macomber’s book ‘One Perfect Word’, where a person will focus on one meaningful word in his or her life for the entire year, and usually be amazed at the goodness that comes from this exercise.

As I think about this picture of my daughter on her trapeze, and how much I love the photo of her, I think my next ‘one perfect word’ will be Balance, but I’m not quite ready for that just yet.  I chose the word ‘Less’ earlier this summer, after reading Macomber’s book on my Kindle, and BTW ~  I.Do.So.Love.My.Kindle.

But I’m still not ready to let go of the word ’Less’ just yet. It’s become personal, and feels as much a part of me as my blue eyes.  I want to say to new people I meet, “Hello. My name is Ruth Andrew, and my one perfect word this year is the word Less.” Of course I’m not really going to do that, but it is tempting, because I’m feeling more and more unburdened as the days and weeks go by ~ with multiple trips to Good Will, tons of books given away in various places, and more bags of trash gone from our household each week.  Less.  Live with less and enjoy it more. It’s powerful. After I spend the rest of 2012 and the coming year, 2013, living with Less every day, then I believe I’ll be ready to move towards Balance.

I’m not exactly sure when this will happen. It doesn’t have to happen on January 1st. It’s more of a generic thing in that it just happens. Suddenly you know what your word should be and when you should make the shift to a new word. I think the word ‘Balance’ will simply creep into my consciousness, and then become a part of My-Every-Day for the next year, or for however long I need it to be a part of my life.

Just this morning I counted up the ‘movable’ chairs in our house and said to my husband, “Do you realize we have 25 movable chairs in this house ~ and 5 more out on the patio for a total of 30!” The thought is already eating at me like a beetle. Two people do not need to have 30 odd chairs that move, though some are around the dining room table and others around the breakfast table and the patio table outside, but this still leaves an additional 15 other odd chairs that we store, move, take out, put away.  Enough, already.  We need fewer chairs at our house. We can do with less.

So, if you walk into our front door one day and notice there are no chairs around the dining room table, you’ll know what happened to them.  I never did like those chairs, anyway, and suddenly remember that I was not even the one who picked them out.  They are too big, too heavy and too hard to move. I’m getting ideas now!

As you can see, the word Less is having a huge impact on my life, including the idea that we need to drastically prune our yard. Each week I suggest we move a bush, trim a shrub, remove offending tree branches, or pull out an intrusive vine. I told my husband yesterday that we can become ‘un-gardners’ now, and take out plants and bushes each year, so that when we are ready to sell the house and move, there will be hardly any yard work for the new family who lives here. Our yard would thrive with less, I tell myself daily. And speaking of moving, when that time comes, I’m sure we’ll have fewer chairs to move, also.

No doubt about it. The word Less has served me well, and will hopefully continue on this peaceful path with me for the duration of 2013, but I must say ~ that delightful word of ‘Balance’ is definitely standing in the wings, like an understudy. I can almost feel it. And that is just how it happens.

No doubt about it, we’re Cougar fans.  Phil and wife Diane both graduated from WSU and their lovely daughters, Jamie and Tate, are also at WSU.  There’s no way getting around it – I am grateful to WSU, Pullman, and the Cougs.

Son Phil even carried the Cougar flag up to a mountain top this spring and planted it, but I’m embarrassed to not know if it was Adams, Hood or Rainier .. but one of those. If I take the time to go do a little research, I’ll come back and update this, now that I’ve learned how to edit and add photos.

There are so many things I’ve decided I love in my life through this month of September, that I can no longer separate them. They’ve all morphed together into one giant ball of gratefulness. I thought this morning that I could go on with this forever, if nothing else just picturing books that have been meaningful to me, but I’ll try to spare my blog from that fate.

The Cougs.  WSU. My kids.  Football. Leaves turning into beautiful Fall colors.  It’s my favorite time of year.

It’s true. I love making pillows, and especially on rainy days. Now that Fall is officially upon us, I am thinking ahead to the stash of fabrics I’ve accumulated over the summer, with bright peonies and yellow sunflowers and rust colored prints, all with lots of summer-green leaves and patterns. And bottons. Lots of buttons.

I’d have to say I love buttons, too. There’s something almost magical about holding handfuls of different shaped buttons, wondering whose dresses or skirts or blouses they’re from, and letting them fall through your fingers. The older the better, I’ve always said. At least it seems that way to me. And now, in this day and age, we have blouses that wrap around our middles and velcro strips that close with just one touch. I wonder if we will ever forget how to button our buttons?

Regardless, I hope we never forget the nudge to hunker down at the sewing machine on cozy, rainy or snowy days, to stitch up a couple of pillows. saving the hand work for later in the afternoon with a cup of hot mint tea on the table … at least that’s how I do it.

We all have our small routines that bring order into our lives, don’t we? My rainy day agendas also conclude with fresh-baked banana or zucchini bread, but that’s my way.

Our modern women would probably prefer a long hike, or a strenuous mountain bike ride with helmet-wearing friends.  But I am happy with my own pillow-making, button-playing, tea-drinking, banana-bread-baking kind of day, especially when it rains & I have a good book waiting to be read at bedtime. That’s what I always call a High Cotton Kind of Day!

Who wouldn’t love Fall leaves like this? We live a few blocks north of the small town of Millwood, a small town, with a wonderful small  park, quaint shops (really, just a few), and gingerbread houses, and these magnificent trees.  Every September and October the leaves in Millwood are stunning.  You just want to stand there and breathe in the oxygen, and of course, we always do exactly that.  Crisp air, yellow, red and orange leaves, and promises of pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread, or our favorite pumpkin chocolate chip muffins waiting at home with a warm fireplace. When I am able to go for an early Fall walk in Millwood, I can’t imagine wanting to ever travel anyplace else n earth.

Fall just may be my favorite time of the year.  But ~ I also say that with the first snow, the first tulip and the first long summer rain. I’m happy to enjoy them all. It also occurs to me this morning, as I look back over my last two morning posts plus todays, that I seem to like yellow a lot … flowers or leaves. Who knew?  I don’t think I did!  It’s fun, at my age, to discover new things about myself and the world around me.

It seems that I love vases.  And flowers.  It’s true. This sweet little vase used to be a knife handle, and I can’t imagine who on earth ever thought of making this into a refrigerator magnet, but there it is.  I’m told granddaughter, Jamie, picked this out for me.  I hear from their mom that one or the other will occasionally say, “Oh, look. This looks like something Grandma Ruth would love,” and they’re always right.  I always do love it!  Lucky me.

Other ‘stuff’ on the front of the fridge, pictured here ~ granddaughter, Tate, playing her sax (part of her HS graduation invitation) and a partial drawing by grandson, Asher, at Starbucks.  (I turned out to be a Starbucks truck!) I’m sure my fridge is no more cluttered than many other grandmother’s, but mine gives me such joy.  If you are a grandparent, I’m sure you understand.