Tonight is the Mansion Art Show, I’ll be one of the judges.
I wanted to mention – some of you are asking me – that there remains one item on the new Mansion Amazon Wish List, a Picnic Party Supplies Bundle (paper and napkins for outdoor lunches and gardening and family events).
Julie Harlin, the Activities Director, is asking for four $13.49 bundles, the party supplies package is the last item on the list. There was an early glitch and it was listed as unavailable. It is available now, I just tested it and bought one.
Thanks for you support, the residents think you have magical powers.
We had the loveliest time with Carol Gulley Wednesday night, it was just a few days since Ed’s funeral, we thought it might be good for Carol to get out and have dinner with some friends, all of them women, as it happened.
Maria was there, of course, and so were our friends Liz Haggerty and Susan Popper. Both of these women have been through transformative experiences and are intuitive and thoughtful. I’ve noticed that Carol is very much at ease with women, she talks to them easily and openly.
I think she tends to withdraw around strong and loud men.
My own instinct – I was cook and dishwasher – was to stay in the background. Women are natural healers, in many cases. The chemistry was very strong. Carol and I are close friends, but sometimes I think I am one of those men to her.
And I want to be honest, as much as Carol loved him, Ed was not the easiest husband in the world.
He tended to fill all of the spaces he was in, he quite naturally took center stage, was opinionated and often impatient with the opinions of others. I think Carol quite often deferred to him and slipped into the background quite instinctively. She calls him My Farmer in her blog, never Ed.
I loved Ed too, but I don’t want to deify him. He was very human. He could be overpowering. He and I were two blowhards together, I could blow back.
I thought Carol needed a quiet night. We talked very little of Ed’s illness and the funeral. I don’t want to share the details of our talking.
So I cooked a dinner of scallops, fresh corn, tomatoes with mozzarella cheese and fresh melon, all from the Moses Farm, the descendants of Grandma herself.
The evening was lovely, from beginning to end. I came and went, and finally disappeared to do the dishes. The conversation flowed easily and comfortably, it sounded lovely from the kitchen, like one of the beautiful running streams.
I think these women all took their cues from Carol without discussing it. They just knew to do it.
Carol didn’t say much at first. Her eyes were puffy and full of sorrow.
But then, as the evening wore on and she began to feel more at ease. She opened up and told us some of the very beautiful and touching stories of her life, about her horse Blackjack, her beloved father, early life on Bejosh Farm with Ed.
Sometimes she needed to be quiet, sometimes she needed to talk.
We all let her decide.
Carol is very proud of her blog, the popular Bejosh Farm Journal, and I ought to say, she was the engine of that blog and of it’s growth, the woman that is always behind the great man.
She had a great subject in Ed and Bejosh Farm, but she has the pride and ego of the natural bloggers, she always knows how many hits and visits the blog gets. She is proud of it, I can tell, and she will continue publishing it. It will be worth following.
Carol was shattered by Ed’s death, but she is also strong and resilient. As often happens, his illness transformed her, she had little choice. This is a process, and she is in it.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve witnessed Carol’s compassion, her devotion to family, her love of Ed, and now I am witnessing something else, an emergence. I felt last night I was talking to Carol in a very different way than I have talked with her. I felt the beginnings of a different Carol.
I knew Carol, we were friends, but this is a different Carol. There is no shadow over her, no towering presence to support and to get out of the way of, or argue with. She will get used to that.
It was just a lovely evening. We could see Carol relax and open up as the night went on.
Maria and I were thinking how well these women did with each other, how at ease they all were with her (Maria too, of course).
She told all kinds of stories of the County Fair, just getting underway (she gave us all tickets, Ed was a big cheese at the fair.) She asked us to make sure to find the grandkids, they are staying in campers and 4-H dormitories to be near their cows.
I want to see the Ed Gulley memorial display his daughter Maggie put up, and i want to see my portrait of photos of him hanging on the exhibit. There are rumors of Thai food at the fair this year, that would be an earthquake.
At dinner, what I was thinking once again was that women are different from men, many are natural and instinctive healers. They understand one another better than most men understand them. The Goddesses seem to reside in many women, they pop up when needed, especially if they are needed by other women.
The evening could have been painful and awkward, but it wasn’t, it was safe and warm and healing, in the way women sometimes are and men rarely are.
I think these women will be getting together often. I felt friendships taking hold. I think it was so good for Carol to come out to have dinner with us, I wasn’t sure she could.
We sat and ate and talked for several hours (I was in the kitchen the last hour) and it felt like such a good place to be. Carol came to life. It was light when they came and pitch black when they got up to leave.
I hadn’t planned to write about it, I didn’t take any photos, but afterwards, I realized I had to write about it.
Tonight, Carol took an important step away from the abyss, she stepped out into the light. Her life had just been shattered, the pieces were beginning to fall into place. Grieving is like that.
I wished peace for Ed, and I wish it for Carol, she knows what’s ahead. And she runs from nothing.
I woke up this morning at 2 a.m. I was somewhat mesmerized by our night-light, which Maria spotted at an antique story a few weeks ago, it cost $30. It exists in the corner of our bedroom, it casts a lovely shadow on the ceiling.
It casts a very soft light in the room and off of the ceiling, Maria has made it into a kind of shrine, there is Buddha and some rocks and crystals. I love the feel of it.
I never did get back to sleep, this has happened to me every night this week. I am not as tired as I ought to be.
A kind of loneliness and need for solitude has swept over me lately, I am keeping to myself.
Tonight, we have invited Carol Gulley and some friends that she knows over for dinner, some people – women – I know she will relate to and knows and feels comfortable with. I’m cooking tonight, scallops and fresh corn and tomato and mozzarella cheese.
Maria wants my recipe, but I never give her my recipes, my grandmother, a superstitious Russian, cautioned me to never give away my recipes, people will leave me. It’s crazy, but I believe it.
I can only guess what Carol is feeling, how painful and how disorienting it might be to suddenly be without a partner of 47 years. I honestly don’t think I can be of much help directly, other than helping her to get out or talk when she needs to.
I imagine that there will be many times she doesn’t need to or want to. Or can’t.
Carol wanted to come, and that pleased and surprised us. I was rushing around all morning getting the right ingredients.
Otherwise, I am not feeling up to much socializing and I am realizing how little I care for most socializing. I tend to favor one on one dinners with conversations, parties or large gatherings are shaped by small talk, they are about small talk, and I am not good at small talk or comfortable with it.
Perhaps it has to do with the Dyslexia, I am told that it sometimes does.
It’s curious but I never thought much about Dyslexia until recently, and I am only beginning to see how it has shaped my life. Maria was looking at one of my fish photographs and was trying to explain the waterline, the tank line, and fish reflections. I couldn’t fathom where one began and the other ended, she saw it right away.
I simply couldn’t grasp what she was saying or understand where one began and the other ended. Then I said to her, “Maria, I can’t process this, it’s the Dyslexia,” and it was good to say and not feel stupid, as I was often made to feel.
I’m not sure where my thirst for solitude is coming from, it might have to do with Ed Gulley’s death from cancer, I can’t say I know. I used to call this a funk, a black hole, but that was fear speaking, now I see it as sweet and cleansing and necessary.
In recent years, the need for solitude has swept over me in great waves, it’s like an ocean tide that goes in and out. Sometimes, you just look up and see that is far out. I need it and find it precious.
There is freedom in solitude, I feel I can grow old freely. I need to be preoccupied with my own usefulness and future less and less. I can now offer services to the world that I could not offer before, there was simply no space in my head.
I have lost many of the obligations and dependencies that shaped so much of my life.
My increasingly empty and long marriage ended, my daughter is grown up and highly competent, my life as a book author is winding down even as my life as a writer seems to just be beginning. I really have very little to prove, and my life will soon enough begin to wind down.
I lost my father, mother, my child lives far away, I never speak to my brother and sometimes speak to my sister, I am not on fire to find success or rewards or recognition.
I love my life with Maria, and talk often with a friend or two. I love being on the farm, writing, taking photos, reading books. Most of the time, this is enough for me.
Ironically, this means I can find a community now, I can do what is the most meaningful to me. I am not religious but I live in a community of faith, I take the world seriously but never too seriously.
I can laugh at myself, and I do, all of the time. This is an important reversal.
It used to be that everyone else laughed at me, and i couldn’t. Life is inherently ridiculous, and if I can’t laugh at it, I will wither like the early spring flowers turning brown in our garden.
In loneliness, I have found my mantra. Do not be afraid, I tell myself, I am accepted.
With my camera, I am exploring the spirituality of fish, and their experience with reflections.
This morning, I sat alone for a bit in the dark with the fish.
I was thinking about something Henri J. M. Nouwen wrote in his meditation, “Out Of Solitude,” a book I return to often.
“Whereas patience is the mother of expectation,” he wrote, “it is expectation that brings new joy to our lives.”
St. Francis told one of his friars, “you are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your heart will be full of joy.”
A person without hope in the future cannot live creatively in the present, I think. Hopeless is not a feeling that opens up the soul. I think the irony, perhaps the paradox, is that those who believe in tomorrow can live better today, in the present.
That is what I am learning about myself. The news does not offer us hope, there is no money in presenting it, according to the marketers. Tragedy and violence and conflict sell, something in the human psyche seems to want fear more than hope.
I am sad sometimes, but expectation brings joy to the sadness and love and hope to my heart.
I think a life lived in expectation is a life filled with hope, and a life filled with hope is a life that knows joy.
The people I know without hope are empty and angry and filled with hurt and bitterness. I can tell them right away, in my life, on the screen. They have nothing to look ahead to.
I embrace expectation, it has always brought joy to my life.
I’ve ordered the tickets for the September 13 Lake George lunch and cruise for the Mansion residents who can and wish to go. I was hoping Joan could come, but the staff feels it would be a bad idea, her ideas and memory have deteriorated in the past year and it might be unsafe for her to go, even if a staffer was available to be with her all the time.
A boat ride on a crowded boat could be confusing and disorienting for her.
So we huddled and Morgan Jones, the Mansion Director and I, came up with an alternative plan. Morgan says Joan lives to ride around and listen to country music, it is her favorite thing. So I countered with this idea.
How about we make Joanie Queen For A Day, I will hire somebody with a big and comfortable car to come to the Mansion and pick her and me and Maria up. We’ll take Joan to lunch at the Round House Cafe and then drive around the beautiful hills and mountains her for an hour or with a boombox loaded with old country music songs, Joan’s favorite.
If she got restless or tired, we could just come back.
I asked Joan about it yesterday and she lit up, so we are going to get her family’s permission and then set a date. I love this idea. Joan is full of life and fun, but her eyes and memory are both fading, I would love to give her this kind of day, I know she would love it, and Maria would love to come along and help.
