November 28, 2009

I didn’t mean to stop writing about this remodel, and yes, it has been continuing in full force. What has happened? The rigors of work, of the project, of meetings, of keeping up with friends and on and on has usurped time.

And Cholla died.

I thought she was depressed. I, of all people, made my own diagnosis, reasoning the effects of the move on her, until I noticed that her gums were going white. Blood tests, ultrasound, an IV in her little paw, and I was given a picture of her liver riddled with black spots. I was told that she would die in a day or two, that it would be best to leave her with the doctor right there. She curled against me, and I took her home. We stayed together for every moment for the next month…everywhere; bike rides, the grocery store, friend’s houses, Home Depot…she didn’t leave my sight, and the remodel plugged on.

One day she growled at me, lumbered over by my desk, then vomited a big pile of blood, looking straight at me, with that look of knowing between us that we had little time. I rushed home, got her into her trailer, and we rode and rode to a favorite place, sitting on a bench overlooking the harbor where we could see Russ’ boat, and with her spasoming my arms, we sat on that bench for hours; some people walking by, the sun going down, her body going limp, me stroking her, and with little yelps, her heart stopped.

My gal that guaranteed me laughter every day of her life is gone, and I don’t like it. I miss her.

I’m sitting here, Kleenex piled in two stacks on either side of me (allergies from the dust around here keeps me sneezing); a picture of Cholla on my laptop, another picture of her stuck to my little oak chest of her in the classic rump up, ears up, tail up, and front paws down…

My Cholla.

This was taken after the diagnosis.

She was a travelin' dog!

Cooling off

I’m packing. And packing. And packing. Days upon days of sorting through and categorizing my things, and curiously watching myself in how I’ve gone through this process. The house is naked enough now that I am returning to my memories of my first night here: I lay in bed, unable to sleep with the awful smell of the smoke buried in the walls from the prior owners, and then crying, wondering what I had gotten myself into. I left the tidiness of my condo for this dilapidated house with so many needs.

The house had the shutters nailed shut upstairs. A friend came over and we playfully pried the shutters off, then sat on the bed during the sunset, watching the bats dart about the sky and the waves furl at the beach. We sat exhausted, but stunned…there was a view, a fabulous view! I left the shutters in the carport for a couple of weeks, the smell of smoke oozing from them all the while, and then eventually, gave them away.

Since then, I’ve been eying over this gapping hole where the stairs make their climb up, thwarting the appealing space of the best view of the house. I’ve worked through every scenario of how to move the stairs so the placement is at the back of the room, and so, in short, that’s why I got an architect. We made plan after plan of possibilities, a year of thinking, drawing, discussing. An engineer had to get involved. Beams have to come in. Now a deck is added on. Yes, I know. All this means a lot of money. A whole lot of money. A mysterious amount of money. I’ve been moving money around from CD to CD, not sure when all the work would start, and now the market is bad. Money is just sitting in a checking account, waiting, waiting like horses in the start of a race, pawing and prancing and getting ready to jump.

Okay, I’m just going to go ahead and give my plug right here and now: the doggy doors made by Pet Doors USA, DogDoors.com are really great. The doors are made of hard plastic with fuzzy brush edges. No slappy plastic sheets that get brittle and let the flies in, not to mention raccoons and other unwanted critters.

I already have an in door model that’s now 6 years old. It locks, too, which is great for vacations or when I just don’t want Cholla outside.

Today I ordered a second one; this one will go into the wall of the room I’m going to move into while the remodel is being done. Cholla and I are going to try to condense our living space while the rest of the house becomes transformed around us.

Water credits are very important. Each location that spews water, and the quantity that spot spews, has a value that add up like diamonds on a wedding ring, and the quantities get written in diamond headed chisel on the title that sits forever in title land, with a panel of Important Water People guarding it.

I love the Earth. I am entering this remodel project with every intent to make the changes as sensitive to the planet as I am when I walk all around native plants on the trails, as I pick up stray garbage on my walks, as I teach children to take the easy actions to reduce, reuse, recycle. Each change I’m making is for the better in conservation and lowest impact on our precious resources.

The house had items in place back in 1969. The house had two bathtubs, and a shower. At the point of title change to me in 1999, an inspector wandered out with a clipboard, encountered the prior owner, an interesting lady often spotted with a bottle of God Knows What wandering around in front of the house, drinking. Who knows what they talked about, if anything, but the inspector had a job to do. He had to make tally marks for the number of bathtubs and showers. He noted that the heads were good on the showers, but made only one tally mark. The lady signed, and off he went with his documents in hand.

Never mind that the city shows two bathtubs and a shower on their file. Never mind that the house was listed in 1999 with two bathtubs on the MLS. Never mind that I have pictures from the open house with the bathtubs and then resident dogs in front of them. Never mind that the $500 inspection I paid for during escrow described the bathtubs in detail and the floor rot around them. Tally marks and water inspectors prevail.

And so, the interesting pressures of documentation have begun. It’s so clear why people avoid the efforts of the permit process, the rigors of inspections and “doing things right.”

I stand here, a bit flabbergasted: it’s as though someone looks me straight in the eye, saying, “Your eyes are brown.” I say, “But, you’re looking right at me! My eyes are blue!” He says, “Well, the doctor who filled out this paper says your eyes are brown, so he must be right.”

And now, the lengthy process begins of proving What Is, making my presentation in front of the Water Board, accumulating my evidence, informing the lawyer, and all the while, being

Calm.

There’s a large hole in my wall downstairs. It has officially begun. The remodel. Single woman with small brown dog is remodeling her entire house. It’s a project that I’ve been working on, well, since I was a small girl and dreamed of my house by the sea, where I would write and play and have a small brown dog.

But first, I had to rent apartments for a long time. I had to fall in love, and then fall in love again, and again, and again. I had to first own a condo by the sea, a block away from where I live now. The last love lived with me here; at one time loved to build; he took down the walls, took off the banister, and we found many excuses to scramble away on inspired trips in the Westfalia with Lita, the brown dog, leaving the work behind. We found the second brown dog, Cholla, our little imp, in Mexico. We would plan for the house, discussing the possibilities, how to move the stairs to get more view space. Then he got sick. Never mind the insulation dangling off the exposed framing, and the wires laying about; the disease worked away, and Russ died downstairs with the comfort of home, of love, around him.

Four more years had to go by. I had to cry a lot. I had to cuddle with a table saw like it was a warm pillow. The pipes had to leak into the room downstairs, the sewer had to be worked on every couple of months, Lita too had to die; I had to try love again, be crushed, then befriend a wonderful man who was old and dying of Parkinson’s to be my first architect.

This project is full of spirit.

Yesterday my friend Tina said I needed to get my feet doted upon, also known as a pedicure. I did this once before in my life with the same friend, two years ago. She does it all the time, so she casually tosses herself into the chair and lets the lady work her feet over. Not me. I watch every movement. Tina works the motor on the vibrating chair like a pro. I look a bit like it’s torture. Tina picks out a color easily knowing that in three weeks she’ll get a new one. Not me. I select the color, pondering the significance of it all like the poet I am.

This time, I decided to get the nails done in the color of the poppies I so love. I figure the poppies and I have a lot in common: we’re both lovers of frilly skirts, the color orange, and we both have this incredibly fragile, vulnerable part of us, but we hang on inspite of anything. We make people smile, we dance a lot, we need our time to close up and rest. We are so open to the mighty forces of life. Dogs like us. We like a home base. So there you have it. Debi celebrating poppies now 24 hours a day, on her feet.

My Field                     

My field has been sold. See the sold sign? I hate this. I hear it’s going to turn into a retirement complex or something. Whatever. It won’t be the place I’ve loved over these four years, the place I’ve cried buckets, watched the seasons pass through, sat in the flowers and let the view seep into my soul. I’ve painted the view of the mountains; I’ve loved every moment in that field, even when the mud of early morning rain washed into my brand new shoes. I’ll continue to love it as long as I can!

January 9, 2005

Grief. It’s this state of being, maybe something like being in a foreign country, and I speak only a little of the language, and I blunder along, and really just want to go home. I know that it can be fun, and will be fun, but right now, I’m into this world. It’s not exactly lonely, it’s just internal. It’s definitely not unexpected; in fact, before Russ died, we talked about the teamwork we had in bringing him to death and how I would need him after; but he’s not physically there; no soft warm skin, no cooing voice, just me and the internal, and the flow of tears. I eat a little, and then I’m done. I sleep a little, and the tape player of my mind kicks in playing tapes of the death, of scenes through the years, obsessively trying to remember details. I can’t multi task. I sort of like looking terrible. Russ had cancer, and I have grief. There aren’t any IV’s for this thing, no appointments, just me and my heart and the journey. Everyone says time. I remember that I got Russ to make tally marks for his Boost drinks to be sure he got in the basic nutrition; now I’m thinking I need rudimentary “survival” strategies for myself.

I love getting the books from so many of you…they are HUGE support for me. Words are a connection for me in learning about me, about healing myself. I welcome more books! Be sure your names are in them! I also have really loved the cards. I must say that each one touches me so; I have to sort of wiggle them around to see the words past the tears, and the tears so pour, and that’s a good thing; your acknowledgements affirm me.

I’m going to attach the obituary in case you missed it. Each thing that I do is so hard; I went to The Herald with that picture of Russ, and the Obituary guy Nick, was saying nice things about the writing, about the picture…I couldn’t help but think how any time someone walks through the door with a red face and a wad of Kleenex sets off a call button for Nick to walk out to guide someone like me to a quiet area. Shoot, then I cry by accident on pictures. I give; this is grief.

I’m wondering what to do about this little avenue of info to you; no more emergencies, but so many thoughts. I had thought I would write to you about Russ’ death, which all by itself, was really a beautiful thing, and maybe I will do it.

Here’s something I wrote in 1992: “My sadness is like a mushroom. I’m a perfect creature made by God, but I can be so fragile. I grow a lot after “storms,” but it’s not easy. I feel very alone. I feel like collapsing.” I love this thing that I wrote. It fits how I feel now so well; but the odd thing is that I wrote it in response to a pain that I now view as a “nothing.” It’s like the kids who wail over a paper cut that we can barely see; but is the pain legitimate? I think so. Pain is whatever pain is whenever it happens under whatever circumstances. What is worrisome is that the pain can be so big and so serious; I really feel that I have entered into a whole new zone of my life. I wonder if now I will be impervious to the “little pains?” I don’t know. It just really makes a lot more sense to me about those old folks, including my parents, who just always seemed to have quiet wisdom about pain in life. My dad used to look at old pictures of his buddies from the war, all those guys lined up and smiling, and there he would be, quiet. I think I get it now. Does my dad feel joy? Oh, yeah, but he has those silences. I think I’ll be part of that group of people now. Does that mean I’m getting “old” now? Maybe.

So it’s hard to do things. I meant to go to this fabulous dance weekend, which I signed up for about the time Russ was diagnosed; we both thought that certainly he would live much longer than that. He would have wanted me to go, to laugh, to twirl, to flirt, to hear the lively music. But I couldn’t do it. I just simply couldn’t do it. It really is as though I am sick; and it IS a sickness; the soul is trying to rebuild, and it’s hard, and there is nothing really overtly joyous about it. Moments of peace, joy in seeing rainbows or the whales spouting in the bay, but not really people oriented. I keep wondering where the humor is; the humor so many of you appreciated during “our” time—and I think that’s it—there is no “our” any more. I worked very hard for Russ. I poured all that I had into him and his path to death.

I likened the work to giving birth; I never gave birth, and frankly, always hoped to. I wanted children very badly. Sometime in November I realized clearly that I was instead, “giving death.” It’s the same “thankless” struggle and sucking of body and soul for another. Yet the struggle is the heart and soul of living, of the cycle of life. It’s the most significant contribution we can make: Birth. Death. A gift to a person who is on this planet, over whose life we have no ultimate control, yet so desperately needs a love to guide him or her in or out. We clean the path, sweep it lovely and rid the rocks, then the other walks it and I can’t pull him back. The cycle of life. There is no choice.

Yesterday I walked the beach and had an insight about rocks. I LOVE rocks, and I’ve always felt a bit jealous of rocks. How is it that rocks get to be eternal? But then I realized, they are not any more eternal than feathers or bones or shells or any residue of the living, as rocks are the bones of the Earth. They rise up from a molten, living existence deep in the Earth. Then I realized why I love those artifacts of the living so much! They are all bones, they are all remnants and memories of the living.

So me, here, living…I am the human side of the spirits. We move along, all in angst over our human troubles, and one day, all this human stuff will lay on or under the Earth in this relief of What Was.

March 25

I’m looking at a a glass installation at the airport in Seattle. I find it so moving, and it mesmerizes me. People scurry past me; they wonder why I am lingering here. They think I am supposed to get into a line of some sort, but I am swimming in the colors of blue stretching from me into the sky, and prisms of rainbows are dancing on the floor around me. The shape is like an inverted rocket, but it’s the hue of the glass that is getting to me: cobalt blues with spices of reds and amber, and rectangular prisms of clear glass falling like rain. It draws me.