OK.
i hope this comes across in the way i am experiencing it. it would be a bummer, if not. but it's the chance you take when you write it and press Publish.
You know that i spend chunks of my week with Old People. I visit Betty, who is Alz B., up at the Old Folks Home twice a week. She will be 90 years old next month. I have known her for i guess, i don't know, maybe 15 years? I was employed by her son when he convinced her to move here. Employed to clean her house, but really, also to be her friend. Do i need to add more detail? I don't think so. This should be enough. Looking back, we can see that her dementia was getting a toe hold then. It's been a slow progression. Today she is unable to string words together into a sentence. Unable, really to even string phonetic sounds into words for the most part. She has no control over her bodily functions. She cannot stand. She does not feed herself, cannot locate her mouth. She languishes.
Her son and i have come to use the words: Haughty Betty and Gone Betty when we report to one another about our visits with her. i can't find that word in the dictionary…haughty…so it's misspelled i guess. hope you get the drift. Haughty: better than. snobbish. Gone Betty is she who slumps totally sideways in her chair, in some internal state of part sleep part consciousness. and then, if you've read along, there is Music Thursday Betty. The Best Betty. I don't need to make it better or worse than it is. It's how it is for her. So, i was there visiting Haughty Angry Betty early this morning. and then i went to the Old Cowboy's.
The Old Cowboy is Robert. Robert will be 85 on his birthday in June. His story is too big to tell. But he has experienced some recent moments that have somehow made him feel even more vulnerable than he needs to. His lifelong friend is visiting for a few days to try to help sort things out. I spent some hours with them today.
how can i tell this…………………………….
The Friend and i are trying to portray reality as we see it. Robert tho is STUCK in his own sense of things. Much, fear based. Much rising up from somehow being Surprised by his having reached this point in his life. Throughout the conversations and lunch, he would circle around to this one thought…"I've dug myself a deep deep hole". By this, he means that what has always worked out to be just an OK life, suddenly is a life of an old physically weakening human being. He sees this as a deep deep hole. Ok. is this enough to give the picture???? i think.
so i came home from that and fed the Goats. Wind here is FIERCE today. the dust blowing in sheets makes you feel a little crazy. But over around and through the dust the SUN is Glorious, the SKY is SKY BLUE…stunning. the WIND days should abate soon.
I took a short nap.
and as it goes, i woke from the nap KNOWING something. i woke from the nap KNOWING that these days, that i am experiencing NOW are the Best, most Grand days i will have. i am 68 years old. so, unlike other periods of time in my life, i no longer can think of the Present as some period of time that can radically change into some other life entirely. I have done that. I have totally and completely CHANGED things. But…i am not going to do that now. Mostly because i have changed things to GET TO THE POINT I AM NOW. THE PLACE I AM NOW. so
here i am.
and here, the telling gets tricky. i hope it's understood. As Jude said yesterday, a personal truth shared.
i woke from the nap with an oh so CLEAR and ELEGANT sense of my momentary life. I am WHERE i want to be. my days are GOOD and within my own ability to Navigate. i have ENOUGH. Enough of Everything needed. i can buy the food i want. i can GROW food. i have two running vehicles (20 yrs old), a car and a truck. i have $700 monthy income from Social Security that pays my basic expenses. i own the land i LIVE ON. my Home is dry. my Home holds my stuff. my physical world here, Goat fencing, septic, electric, water lines…WORK. All the mundane. Functioning. glitches come and go but Functioning.
my physical self is aging. yes. but i am also Functioning. really, the best i have Ever. i have learned HOW to work my body.
i have come to a place within my self that i feel GROUNDED, well, in a spiritual sense. Excited to go forward in that, hone that, learn.
and i have CLOTH MAKING. this pile on the table above that opens out into an endless possibility for me.
so what am i trying to say here???? That i understood that These Days NOW are the Best. how long it will remain so, Who Knows???? But right now, i really want to Acknowledge that. and consciously and acutely remain AWARE as i was in this moment of waking this afternoon.
again. i really don't love blogs where there is this blanket gratitude. the Pollyanna thing. this is not what i am saying. i hope. but to SEE that it's Good. even knowing that it won't always be like it is today. holding both of those thoughts Together and well, loving it. yes. loving it.
ADDENDUM
i just went out with the Goats. they are so funny. so crazy. so Themselves. and i wanted so much to let them come in. Come in to this House. They would have. They would have come in, their fine hooves clicking/clacking on the floor, they would run around, they would jump up on the futon couch, the end table. they would be a Flurry of Goatness and then i would yell, OUT and
they would run out, back into their regular world.
i wonder if i will actually DO this one day?, i would not be surprised if i did.
windthread 
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