but the day that happened,  nonethe less.   I'd forgotten that it was Alz. B's care conference day.  And i had thought that her son Bill would be back home from the Northwest.   So i went to Music Thursday this morning and one of the members of that band's granddaughter was in town.  A beautifully healthy and robust young woman with her fiddle and her voice.   I got there a little late so i don't know if she will continue to come for a while or if this was a GIFT of today.   One way i can tell that i am moving along the line is how so much i just LOVE young women.   To me they are the finest of the fine,  their clear eyes,  their strong bodies, their Spirit just SHINING THROUGH….i love them and would celebrate each of them with everything i've got.

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took the camera.    This is the old folks home from the highway.   On the right,  you can see what might look like a two story part of the whole.   It's not.  It's the Alzheimers Wing  (from which Alz.B was voted off…that island….because of bad behavior…sent to general population) which was built with very high ceilings to give a sense of space.

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this is where i park.   Just to the low left you see my bumper.

So the care conference.   All disciplines represented and me as family member.   Weight same: 98lbs.   Cognitive Function: same    This is now three years into it.   What has changed is that she is no longer  "toileted".  She has no self sense of all that.   So,  in the last couple of months,  she is just "cleaned up"  after the fact.   Every day, she is fed,  encouraged to drink fluids.  I have quit participating in that.  I no longer go at lunch like i did for 2 years.   But she continues to open her mouth for the spoon.   Continues to sip from the straw.   Her weight remains stable.   OK.

 

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And because Mimmin has been walking hand and hand with me through the last year,  i saw that this time last year the Apple Tree there was laden.  So today i looked,  and YES!,  again.  Tart excellent pie apples at the edge of one of the outside court yards.  No one cares.   PIES!  The one in the front,  visited by some bird,  was the only one with a single mark.  Beautiful apples,  natural,  just because a tree wants to make them.  Tomorrow…Apple Pie.

 

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on the way back,  a better pic of the Thrift Shop.

 

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and those beings from the other day……well,   i was wrong.  They are high in the Big Bush and i thought they were the same,  but NOT.   Today they are caterpillars….and i still have no clue what they might also Be.

 

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someone lost a small single very perfect under feather.

 

And today is the 45th Anniversary of Woodstock.   "we are stardust,  we are golden.  we are a billion year old carbon"  they sang.   I watched on Utube,  Jimi Hendricks…who,  to this day,  i would go with…anywhere……   I didn't get to go to Woodstock.   Tom,  the father of my children,  wanted to get out of the Draft.   He didn't want to go to Canada  so he looked into Peace Corps.  The only program available at that time was for married couples.  So we got married and instead of going to Woodstock,  we went into Peace Corps training in San Luis Obispo California.  

But i am PROUD.  so PROUD of Woodstock,  for all it's craziness.  It Was Stardust and Golden.

We Believed in something very BEAUTY FULL and GRAND.   And i realize that i try to give that Beauty and Grandness to my granddaughter today,  even tho it seems too hard.  I want her to know what it was.

 

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19 responses to “not the day i’d envisioned,”

  1. julie Avatar
    julie

    hmm..apple pie w tomatoes and chili powder…

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  2. jude Avatar

    and i was there. woodstock.

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  3. grace Avatar

    you
    were
    there.
    woodstock.
    you were
    there.

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  4. grace Avatar

    you were stardust.
    you were golden
    you were a half a million strong

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  5. kathy dorfer Avatar
    kathy dorfer

    my roommates all went … i went to europe for 6 weeks .i am still glad i went to europe (:

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  6. handstories Avatar

    I remember hearing stories of it, had just finished first grade, and people were landing on the moon…it seemed like a time full of possibilities.

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  7. tracy Avatar
    tracy

    Beautiful old hippy stuff said Pete Townsend many years later. And golden.

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  8. tracy Avatar
    tracy

    Apples are still the same. They’re golden too. Hurray for free fruit!

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  9. Patricia Avatar

    almost went but who knew ahead of time? went to Mexico instead for three weeks. had the most amazing experiences…most amazing…and even picked up a hitchhiker in animal skins who was the reincarnation of Montezuma. Yep.
    now this post is absolutely the bestest. the pictures of where you go and how things look. your diorama. here we have tent caterpillars that totally devour whatever they land on. the difference is that they also spin big nesty webs. i don’t see any here, but i bet these guys are munching.
    and yes, i understand what you say about fine young women. and to think–we were there one time as well. i woke up this morning wondering where my fine biceps had gone.

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  10. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    …oh and i seem to have lost the squareness of shoulders…for me… woodstock was an across the continent dream..but i had the monteray pop festival…janis joplin was just so young and new..i fell in love with everyone otis redding..jimi hendrix..ravi shankar…the who
    and so many of them became entwined with my life..the who and tommy at the seattle opera company..being in seattle on university avenue when the news of jimi hendrix’s death swept up the street…..
    when i look back at the list it does not even seem real or possible..but i am so glad to have been/to be of this generation
    we were not half a million strong..but oh we felt golden…
    i love seeing the pictures, the places..i so enjoy tucking them away and building a mental construct of the places in your life..

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  11. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    Old folks…I think about it because I’m one now past seventy…I think about it–I wept when I first heard Jacques Brel http://youtu.be/SXGlo1euwBY
    Woodstock was a moment for me when, young and hopeful, horrified by Vietnam and Nixon and I BELIEVED we could change the world forever–NO MORE WAR–http://youtu.be/DAf_flTfobI
    The young women I most often encounter in this City are lost in surface, ambition, and ignorance. They seem to have little sense of history–but this City, and maybe all cities now are not much more than venal money machines, so it can’t be helped. However, to be fair, I do meet plenty of good young women, active, intelligent and principled..In the authentic yoga community, at Buddhist gatherings, at the farm market, in environmental and human rights movements, and on the internet. All is not lost. it was only ten years ago that a million young and old sang along with Holly Near in Washington http://youtu.be/johabhyURIw

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  12. grace Forrest Avatar

    i should try that sometime….

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  13. grace Forrest Avatar

    interesting…how it played out

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  14. grace Forrest Avatar

    for us it was a time of Viet Nam and Civil unrest

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  15. grace Forrest Avatar

    i am glad about it

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  16. grace Forrest Avatar

    they munch, yes, but really are kind of slow and polite.
    I’ve never seen them do in a whole lot, a few branches.
    But this year, who knows.
    Granddaughter sent me a link to Huffington Post…a woman,Lucy Hilmer, who takes a picture of herself each year for i think 30 years ongoing called Birthday Suits. She
    is just standing there, wearing a pair of underpants, her socks and shoes. Year after year we see her. She will be
    photographing her 70th birthday suit next. It is very Beauty Full.

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  17. grace Forrest Avatar

    i would trade Nothing for those days….

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  18. grace Forrest Avatar

    it’s hard to know what’s really going on. Hard to gather in the Big Picture…

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