squirrelsandchipmonks

I got old. I don’t really remember when it happened because it happened so fast. One minute I was covered in spit- up and knee- deep in diapers. The next, well, it seems as if the former never even happened.

A year and a half ago I had a fall and landed in the hospital with a broken hip. That did not bother me so very much other than I felt stupid. As we waited in the lobby of the emergency room, my husband muttered that he was embarrassed to be seen in the ER with me and my potentially broken hip. I was only sixty four years old, not eighty four. This was far too early for this sort of thing to be happening. I had to admit that I agreed with him.

Three days later, I was back home, held together with what for all the world look like drywall screws and walking with a walker. Still did not bother me. All of the little children in my neighborhood were envious of my new “wheels” and the adults enquired, as tactfully as they could, about what had happened. “Just stupidity” was my reply.

Two weeks later my husband, who seldom makes pronouncements, announced that my fall had opened his eyes to the fact that we were getting older. I silently agreed that he was getting on in years. Because, he said, we were getting to “that age,” it was time for us to engage the services of an elder lawyer to put all of our affairs in order, set up trust funds for our children and have medical directives. That did seem like the responsible thing to do. He went on to say that he was going to retire when I went on Medicare, which would happen on my next birthday, and we were moving. Those two things really got my attention. In essence, he was cutting off my spending and by moving, I knew he meant to a retirement community. I felt my crows’ feet lengthen.

I dragged my feet as much as I possibly could and then realized he was going to buy a house with or without me and I’d better get with the program. We watched Youtube videos of retirement communities in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon and California. None of those appealed to me as they took me far away from the one child who lived close by and moved me only a bit closer to the other child who could move at the drop of a hat, based on the dictates of his job.

In the end we chose a community closer to the one child who was already close by. I could still keep all my activities and friends. As long as I did not mind a much longer drive. Who in their right mind puts a retirement community out in the middle of nowhere?

My husband plunged himself into his various projects- retiring from his job of 33 years, helping me get on Medicare, and designing the house that we would have built. He planned and I packed, which was a real challenge as we had lived in our home for 33 years and had accumulated 33 years worth of stuff.

The new house would be smaller, with no basement and very little storage space. He had ten times the amount of stuff that I did, which was a lot of stuff. I fussed and fumed because all he did was futz on his computer while I packed and culled and cleaned.

He who refused to pack until the very last minute had an entire basement to clean. It took two strong men, two huge dumpsters and two days of work to clear just his basement. The neighbors were polite enough to keep their snickers to themselves.

 

In the end it all fell into place, which is a good thing because it reaffirmed my decision that my next move will be to a tasteful pine box. My children can deal with all of my earthly belongings, which they refused to take in the first place.

We come to my resolution. We have a lovely home on a street that the city misspelled and refuses to change, in the middle of nowhere, with the closest grocery store a 20 minute drive away, and filled to the rafters with stuff neither one of us can bear to part with.

We have a view of a small, muddy “pond” with a fountain that doesn’t work and a rubber liner that has bubbled up around the edges. And we have spiders the size of small kittens, one of which followed me around the garage the other evening. I talked to him and named him Fred. Yesterday, my husband ran over Fred with the car.

Old people get cranky. I’m beginning to understand why.

That is usually the first advice given to aspiring writers and for good reason. You can only be at ease with that which you know best. It’s possible to write what you don’t know, i.e. murder mysteries, sci- fi that sort of thing, but to have something come from the heart it must be personal. Which also means painful. My writing is dark these days for good reason- I’ve had so much personal grief lately and it has put me in a very dark place. Two deaths within the last year and a nasty fall in April resulting in a broken hip have done it! The broken hip has helped reinvigorate my writing, because, hey, I’ve been on a walker, going no where. As I am not used to a sedentary life, I’ve been bored out of my my mind. Knitting, writing and tv watching have filled many an hour for me. When I reviewed my past reading- The Plague in 14 th century Europe, Asleep- the sleeping sickness of the 19th century, as well as a few gory murder mysteries ( my guilty pleasure), it is no wonder my writing has focused on death, disease and uncomfortable-ness.

Writing exposes us and like a good murder mystery , we leave trace evidence of ourselves behind. A piece I wrote last winter about my brother’s death was very difficult to write for just that reason. In writing about him, I  laid my soul out for all to see and that is never pleasant. Or easy.

What an eventful spring it has been! A tumble sent me to the hospital for an emergency operation on a broken hip. And of course that happened on April Fools Day. Recovery is slow and frustrating. So because I’ve been confined in my activities, I’ve tackled some projects that I’ve been putting off.When my mother passed, I inherited four large boxes of family photos, and I’ve been sorting through them. I had no idea my parents knew so many people I didn’t! It’s been painful to see pictures of my brother, but I grateful to have them. I don’t imagine I will be writing too much in the next couple of weeks as my brain is still too muddled from all of the post-surgical medication, so that will be all for now

My writing has taken a direct hit lately. Within the space of a year, I have lost 3 people in my immediate family and two family pets. The most difficult of these losses has been the recent loss of my only sibling, my brother. He succumbed to cancer after a hellish fight that lasted 7 months. He was never able to get his pain under control and at times, when I talked with him, he was almost hysterical with pain. I saw his body before his remains were cremated. I would like to forget that I did. The image of his emaciated remains haunt me.

My brother was military from the moment he graduated from college up until his retirement 18 months before he found out that he had bone marrow cancer. The list of career accomplishments that his obituary listed were  impressive.  I knew all of those things, of course, but to me he was just my dorky, older brother.

In order to ease the pain, I am finally writing about his death. Writing is very cathartic; if I talk about it, I talk way too much , so writing keeps my wordiness to a minimum. The details of his disease, suffering, death and funeral are best kept to myself. I constantly remind myself that a casual inquiry from a friend does not mean they want to hear it all!

Before I began writing in earnest, years ago, I enrolled in a local university and took all of the writing classes they had to offer. Each class required outside writing assignments which would then be submitted for group discussion, standard procedure. What a hard lesson it was to learn that a writer  must pick and choose what goes  into a story and what is best left unsaid. Surely my readers wanted to hear every tiny detail. It’s painful to find out they don’t.

I don’t think I will say much more about my brother, but I’m sure the experience will color my writing. That’s what life does. And yes- it’s still snowing.

It’s winter in the northern hemisphere and I just logged in to check my site, something I haven’t done in months, and to my total surprise,  my stats show I’ve had something like 37 Brazilian visitors! Now, if I lived in beautiful, warm sunny Brazil, would I want to read about the dreary winter weather of the midwestern United States? I can’t imagine, but since they did, I will tell them that even though our winter has been  dreary and cloudy most days, nature is alive and well and getting ready for spring. Might be hard to believe at this point, but emerging daffodils and crocuses affirm spring is coming. Buds have appeared on shrubs and trees, and my favorite, the pair of Red Tailed hawks that live in the woods behind my house, are out and about. They stay here year round, but in the bleak winter, they are not so noisy, more sedate. Now that we’ve had a warm day or two, they are out, circling high above the woods, screaming their presence. It would appear that they too have had enough of this  winter.

One day last week, I heard one solitary Sandhill Crane, high in the sky, his drunken-sounding warble almost lost above the traffic noise. He sounded so lonely that I felt sorry for him. I imagined the flock hunkered together, drawing straws to see who would have to go back and check on the summer nesting grounds. This guy obviously got the short straw.

And then there are the black birds. There is nothing better than hearing the high trill of the black birds; that means that spring is truly on its’ way. They have started to arrive in small flocks; soon the racket will be deafening as their ranks swell. I don’t mind a bit. But while these signs are excitingly evident, the weather map tells a different story, one of ice and snow tonight and tomorrow. Blah.  I certainly hope those poor little guys have found a warm place to sleep tonight. They are really going to need it…….

I write creative non-fiction. People always ask me what that means- it sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it is a legit form of literary writing, and in the simplest of terms, it is writing wherein the facts of the story are true and the writing is, well, creative. The writer can condense a series of events into a short period of time or stretch them out to meet the need. In my story, Metro Mice, I really was in the Paris Metro, there was a busy mouse on his way somewhere, movie posters, and a man who stared to see what I was looking at. And yes I was very embarrassed when he didn’t see what I saw.

 

Metro Mice

I know of a mouse that lives in the Porte d’Orleans station of the Paris Metro. Now I don’t know him personally but I do know he exists. I spy him one day as I wait for a train to take me to see the sights of Paris.

He is an industrious little fellow and when I spot him, he is scurrying with great purpose along an open channel in the concrete behind the seats on the platform. I fancy him to be late for an important meeting. Perhaps he is hurrying to the  International Mouse Court to argue an important case. Could it be that he holds the fate of the entire French Mouse Nation in his tiny paws? He must surely be a mouse of great stature for he is the only one out so early on this bright spring morning.

And now I have disrupted his weighty plans because my eyes have been drawn by his stealthy movements. We remain motionless, staring deep into each other’s eyes, a game of chicken to see who will move first.

The Paris Metro is a beehive of activity and noise. It’s early morning and a workday. Trains arrive and depart regularly, their brakes screaming in loud protest each time they stop. Beeping doors slide open to disgorge herds of people who unapologetically bump into each other, as they head to their exits. Within seconds, the doors slide shut and the trains are on their way to the next destination.

Newcomers file in and mill about waiting for the next train, the cycle repeating itself. They peer anxiously down the tracks to see if it’s coming. They pace back and forth, some animatedly talking on their cell phones, others reading ragged promotional movie posters tagged with graffiti. Up to now, they have provided an interesting diversion for me as I wait. I am no longer interested in eavesdropping on their private conversations under the guise of improving my conversational French.

In all of this hustle and bustle I am suddenly aware that a man is watching me. When I look up, la souris important* takes advantage of the opportunity and darts down a tiny hole.

The man strains to look into the concrete channel to find the object of my attention, but because the mouse has vanished, he sees nothing. He looks back at me, his brows knit with curiosity. My cheeks flush and I look away. He remembers he is in a hurry and rushes to catch his train.

I look around to see if anyone else is watching me; no need to worry- people are much too busy.

I sit quietly, staring into the tiny hole, hoping that the mouse will pop his head up to see if the coast is clear so he can continue safely on his way. He doesn’t.  Perhaps he has connected with another route or maybe he is trembling in a dark corner traumatized by the whole experience. Whatever the case, it is doubtful that I will see him again.

A nosy squeal of brakes announces my train. I am bored and anxious to be on my way. I have no one to talk to on my cell phone, it is certain no one would eavesdrop in the hopes of improving their English, and it is highly doubtful I will go see the new movie, Marie Antoinette, no matter how many times I read the movie posters.

* the important mouse

This is the first post of Squirrelsandchipmunks, in case you didn’t already know that. Everybody and their dog has a blog site and here I am just now getting on the bandwagon. I have a 1970’s degree in Natural Resources and write about animals that I come in contact with in the everyday world. The Midwest in the winter doesn’t provide much in the way of breathless scenery and majestic animals. It’s much more on the small scale. So think small and look in the small places and you can find the most interesting things. And that’s what I do. So in the days to come, as I figure out all this blog stuff, I will be making posts of my work and as any writer would, I will really appreciate your feedback, after all that’s what makes us improve as writers.