the color of my soul

husband's bestie has sold his place and is moving away at the end of the month. he's a truly lovely person, a retired pilot, and i will miss him because he's been a staple dinner guest at our house for over a decade, but husband will miss him even more. in fact, i'm a little worried about husband without him. a young couple has bought his place and the wife is apparently a fellow american. husband has briefly met them, but i haven't. they won't be the same, but if i've learned one thing, it's that things don't stay the same and you have to be open to what comes next. 

i've been reading a lot of new substacks of late and many are focused on the new years resolution genre. i guess it's just that time of year. a surprising number of them quote rumi. kind of weird how appropriated his work has been by the gratitude/self-help set. i can't decide if it's good that it pushes it to a wider audience or if it somehow cheapens it. maybe it's a bit of both. but anyway susan cain asks in the new year's edition of the quiet life, what color is your soul now? what color do you want it to be? which she doesn't attribute to rumi (though she does quote him in the stack), but marcus aurelius, "your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."

affected by the time of year, i think my soul is currently that wintery nordic greyish blue. it's not a terrible color for your soul to be. it's peaceful and quiet, if a little cold. it seems a little lighter and more tending towards the blue than the grey after yesterday's scream in the forest. it feels in tune with the slight slowly returning after the solstice. i think the color i want it to be is a sunny, bright yellow. and that will surely come with summer and the buzzing yellow of the canola fields. and it will no doubt pass through that brilliant light green of the first beech leaves as they unfurl in the spring on the way there. our souls aren't just one color, but the whole spectrum and that color can change with the season or even from day to day or minute to minute. but susan is right, that it's worth thinking about what you're feeding your soul. and currently, i want to feed mine light. 

goodbye dear friend

i've been home sick. after all the travel in recent weeks, i have ended up with a head cold, slight fever and general aches. i think it was my body's way of telling me i needed to take a moment to slow down. the weather was blustery and there were squalls of rain off and on all day. but just before 6:30 p.m., i was sitting at my desk and the sun came out in a full blaze of glory. it exposed all those spider webs that have accumulated on the window, but even so, it was warm, golden and welcome. i turned my face towards it and basked for a few minutes. a few hours later i learned that our dear old friend cyndy was finally released from the bonds of her cancer, at right about that time. and i can't help but think that the beautiful, welcome, golden light was her, finally coming over to see me here in the falling down farmhouse. and it didn't feel so much like goodbye as hello. thank you for the light cyndy, i am sure you have found it. it was a privilege to know you and be touched by your enthusiasm, your words, your thoughtfulness and your kindness. godspeed.

african violets

as the fog began to descend on my grandmother, she began to hoard kleenex and african violets. she bought boxes in every shape, color, pattern and size. and the african violets bloomed their little hearts out under special lamps in her basement apartment. and i don't think i really noticed that her mind was slipping, even though i should have been old enough to realize. she still made tea when i came over and 15 kinds of christmas cookies during december and a sunday roast that was so tender it fell apart and didn't need to be cut with a knife. she was still my grandma and i don't recall any of the adults around me ever talking about her plight in my presence. maybe it was just seen as a normal part of the aging process in those days. i do remember her in the nursing home towards the end. how childlike she seemed, how innocent somehow. but how hard it was to visit her and know she didn't recognize me. and what a relief it was in a sense when her time finally came, and she was released from the bondage of the fog. from a life that was no longer a life.

months later, i had a vivid dream of her. we had tea together, using her chinese tea set, that we had used so many times for tea parties in my childhood - dragons on the small cups and saucers, ombre grey to black color on the pot. we laughed and played tea party, just as we always had. and she told me, looking straight into my eyes, that she was ok. and i always felt it as the goodbye i didn't have the chance to have with her fogged-in self. it felt so vivid and real and vital and warm. it really was goodbye and i really think that she was there in my dream - the real, whole essence of her. 

i think i need an african violet.

* * *

a tragic ending to a unusual and artistic life.

goodbye aunt ruth

my aunt ruth died last week. she was the eldest of my father's sisters. she made it to 91. there are only four of dad's siblings left now and six are gone (including dad).  i guess we've reached that point. aunt ruth looked more and more like our grandmother as the years went by. her voice came to match the same pitch, her weekly coiffed beauty shop hair increasingly white like grandma kate's. the same impatience if you were slow to play your card or made a dumb move in scrabble. her thrift - apparently no amount of leftovers was too little to save.  she had other parallels with grandma - losing her husband early and having to cope with a whole flock of children on her own.

she had five children, five cousins who i don't know as well as i know many of my other cousins. only two of them were in my age range. the others were quite a lot older than me and we never lived close to them. my impression is that only one of them has really stayed in touch with the family. i remember "brother bruce" calling my dad on occasion.

i have warm memories of the oldest of those cousins. the summer when i was 18, i lived with my horse trainer in rapid city and i went to visit aunt ruth frequently. barbara, her eldest, and her husband were there. in my memory, they were there that whole summer, but it may have been just a couple of weeks. memory is like that. it stretches out at times. especially in the long, hot days of summer.

i'd go over and have dinner with them and after dinner, we'd play cards. barbara and her husband would mix each of us up a white russian - kahlua, vodka, plenty of ice and a dash of cream. i was only 18, so it was deliciously illicit to me. it was legal in those days for 18-year-old in south dakota to drink "low point" beer, but white russians were a forbidden luxury until 21. and when it's slightly forbidden, it's that much better. and even aunt ruth drank them with us (that was decidedly un-grandma kate of her). i felt like i had joined the club. the club of adults. i don't remember ever getting tipsy from them and i don't remember if we ever had more than one. but i remember those card games very fondly. and to this day, when i drink a white russian (which is all too seldom) i think of those long luxurious summer nights when i was 18.

thank you aunt ruth. you will be missed.

another goodbye

it's been a bit too much lately. losing dad. having my dream job done away with ("we're not ready for co-creation" and besides, "you're not commercial.").  getting turned down for another job after being tortured with an agonizing wait of an entire month. and now aunt mary has died as well. these are relentlessly grey, cold, dark days. it really is all too much.

aunt mary was such a presence in our family. married to my dad's oldest brother, she raised five children and has countless grandchildren and great-grandchildren. i'm so glad i visited her when i was there when dad died back in november. although i didn't know it would be the last time, it was a very nice visit. her beautiful home on the hill with the views of vast rolling prairie (these photos were taken from her house one summer) and traces of an old indian trail if you looked in the right spot when the grass was just right in the summer or when winter's snows had filled the ghosts of the ruts. you could feel the history blowing there in the prairie winds. and her cabinets of curiosities - quilts, antiques, artifacts. she always had stories to tell, stories that more often than not resulted in everyone dissolving in genuine laughter. she was always so positive and cheerful. sort of a stalwart ray of sunshine in the midst of the chaos of our big family. we sipped tea and ate cookies and listened to family stories and it was always wonderful to gather around her kitchen table.

she was 89, so she had a long, full life. uncle jim had died back in 2008, but she was surrounded by her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so she wasn't alone. she was, like all of us, hit hard by my dad's death and i wonder if perhaps she didn't think it was time to go and join those who had gone before.

although i'm not sure that i believe that's what happens, it is comforting to think of it at times like this. i can just hear her laugh and dad's laugh and uncle jim's and uncle red's as well. and i hope that maybe somewhere they are now laughing and swapping stories together once again, perhaps playing a game of "tell" (the card game that's actually called "oh hell") with grandma kate. and that they know that we miss them. and that we are forever changed by the time we had with them.