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Archive for the ‘Souvenirs’ Category

If this is ultimately going to be OK, why do I keep bursting into tears?

08 Jun

This is one of those good news/bad news things. Which do you want first? I love the answer my friend Susan gave us when we asked her this last night (oh my lawd, was that just last night? It feels like a million years ago…) – she said she wanted the bad news first because if she got the good news first she wouldn’t hear it because she’d be so worried about what the bad news was. I am 100% on board with that.

Let me say first that nobody (that I know of) has been diagnosed with cancer, has been hit by a bus, had a horrible miscarriage, or any other such badness.

But for those of you who are regulars at our yarn store, or have been cheering from the sidelines, we have some news about some changes. I will wait while you go read that, if you want. doo dee dooo….. la la la la la…. doo dee doo…. back yet? Never left? Want me to just tell you in a nutshell, or recap if you just read it and your mind has gone blank? Hanks Yarn and Fiber is changing to a new business model that involves being online and no longer having a bricks-and-mortar storefront.

I have so much I want to say.

This is hard. The first few weeks I expect to be walking around the house trying to talk to Sharon, maybe even shouting out to her like she might be in the other room. It’ll be like when you can’t remember where you put your coffee cup, and you walk around with a sense of loss and irritation at yourself. The thought that I won’t see Nugget taking her brave steps across the floor of the yarn shop is like a knife in my heart; so is the thought of not seeing Little K push the little red rocking chair around. I love those kids SO!HARD! And that’s crazy, because y’all know what a bitter and black place my heart is. It’ll be hard because I feel like a failure. I feel like I am stupid and useless and have wasted the last three years on something that didn’t work.

This is easy. I’m going to get to do a part of the job I love – dyeing yarn – all the time. Maybe even in my PJs. I am reassured by my loving family that I am not a failure; that if anything, the economy has failed me. That Ginger and Sharon and I were strong and amazing for moving forward with our dreams, and if I was brave enough to do that three years ago I am surely just as brave now. This is not a failure. This is a re-imagining of our dream, set to fit the horrible status of the US economy. We won’t have the enormous rent hanging over our heads like a guillotine, and that will make things easier for us. Also, I can find a part-time job (file this under “maybe easy, maybe hard”) and get a paycheck, thus ensuring that our new kittens will not suddenly be made homeless.

This is the worst thing ever in the history of worst things. I am a failure. I should be put in front of a firing squad. Wait – actually? Yeah. Smack me. My father dying was worse than this. If I got through that I can get through this. We are given burdens in this life; also shoulders.

This is ultimately going to be OK. We are going to be able to reach heights with our lines of things online that we just couldn’t do in a shop setting, because of all the overhead. And the people who love us, love hanging out with us – that won’t stop. My time is easily bought for cold beer, cute pets, Satchel’s, Sweet Dreams, and Yum Cupcakery. And also easily bought just for being able to hang out with you. So… call me! After July 1st, my dance card is pretty fucking free!

And you know what? A lot of the reason I haven’t been blogging about personal things is that I’ve wanted to share my fears with you for such a long time. And I couldn’t. We thought we might save the storefront. We though we might be able to swing it; maybe move, maybe downsize… but we didn’t know. And I’ve been so confused and worried and wanting to talk to you, but … didn’t want to start rumors about the yarn shop that would make people think we’ve closed and thus make things worse. So it’s been easier to not say anything at all, rather than try to be fluffy. I’m looking forward to blogging more, to letting more of my heart out on these pages.

I hope you’ll stick around – both here, and on our online shop. I hope you’ll still like me. Because I love you – HARD!

 
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Posted in My Random Life, Navel Gazing, Souvenirs

 

The last to go shall see the first three go before her

21 Apr

(Originally posted June 19, 2005)

I don’t really remember the first person I lost.

I think it was either Aunt Nellie or Aunt Mildred, gone when I was young. Less than 10, I think. Too young to really get what death meant, or how heavy it could hit you.

Next would probably be my grandfather, my mother’s father. I was a bit older then… 12? 13? But since I didn’t know him very well, it didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt my mother.

The first one that I really started to get the finality of was my father’s father. I remember the song we rehearsed, as a family, to sing at his funeral. And how my grandmother looked, weeping, in her wheelchair, as we sang it. But since he and I were never close – in fact, I was a bit afraid of him – I didn’t feel the loss that others in my family did.

No, the first one that really made me understand, really made me ache, was when I was 20 and my father’s mother died. I don’t know if it was because we were so close, or because I was finally old enough to get it…? But the loss of her was something that I still carry around and, and still occasionally get surprised by the weight of the loss.

I’ve lost friends, too. When I was 18, in art school, a cop friend of ours shot himself in the head while at a party. Some party, eh? To this day, I can’t watch movies where people get shot in the head without thinking, “it’s not a neat little hole like that, you know. It really goes everywhere.”  Three or four years later I lost another friend to cancer.

For all that losing my paternal grandmother shook me, it didn’t even begin to prepare me for what losing my father was like.

Now, similar to the game of “which limb from the big pine tree is going to fall next” game, I find myself wondering who is going to be next. Odds would say the eldest, wouldn’t it?

Well, you’d think so. But then a co-worker six years younger than I am gets struck by lightning in the field one day, and you just can’t be too sure of those odds.

An old family friend – and by that I mean someone who has known me since I was about four years old, not that he’s old – has recently been diagnosed with two kinds of cancer. And I find myself like Dorothy, faced by the Wicked Witch of the West. She’s telling me that the last to go shall see the first three go before her—only it’s not three, it’s an unknown number. It could be three. But it could be thirty. It’s a crapshoot. It’s all a crapshoot; whatever we get is what we get and those of us that are left behind have to keep the memory of our loved ones alive in our hearts so that they never truly die and lie forgotten. And I think of what my friend Neil wrote once; “you get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime.”

And I try to make the best of mine, and to see the best in yours.

 
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It was the best of times; it was the worst of times

18 Apr

(Originally posted August 9, 2006)

This post is for Beth, who didn’t know that today was my third anniversary and just Monday asked the question of how Tim and I met.

The short story is that we met at work.

The long story is much longer, and is proving hard for me to write. To write about Tim and I building the foundation of our relationship, I also have to write about the ending of my fathers life—for both of these events took place at the same time. I can’t smile over the one without feeling sorrow for the other.

And I will warn you that when I say “long” I really mean “grab a drink and put your feet up because this is really going to take some time to tell you this story”. I know nobody ever reads the long posts, otherwise y’all would comment more on them. But here it is anyway, in all its 1,773 words.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Funniest line about having cancer

15 Apr

(Originally posted February 19, 2006)

Bill, yesterday: “I told my doctor I was more interested in quality of life, and not longevity. I kind of assumed he’d understand that ‘quality of life’ meant, you know, fucking walking.”

Sometimes you just have to laugh, because the crying would kill you.

 
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And though I cried I was so proud to love a man so rare

12 Apr

(Originally posted on May 2, 2007)

He died about a month ago
While winter filled the air
And though I cried I was so proud
To love a man so rare.
He’s somewhere on the ocean now,
That’s where he ought to be
With one hand on the starboard rail
He’s waving back at me.
- Jimmy Buffett, The Captain and the Kid

Bill’s memorial service was Sunday (I have some photos but not tons; other people were taking some also and with any luck some of theirs will filter my way and I’ll be happy to share).

We got to Aunt Gay and Uncle Joe’s around noon, but Mike and Sharon and Barbara had beat us there by about an hour and there wasn’t much setting up to do. So I put my goodies in the oven (cheese & artichoke dip, and a cheese/pineapple/cracker concoction that sounds disgusting, looks like dog barf, and tastes like the best thing you’ve ever had the luck to put in your mouth) and had some wine with Uncle Joe.

As more people got there, we gathered in the living room. There was live music. There was singing. There were stories—oh, the stories! Bill had touched, had influenced, had guided, had saved so many people, so many lives. He was the type of person who would just give. And give. And give. Without asking, without expectation; it was just in his nature to give of himself whatever he could. And so many people said so. Me? I just cried. I cried, and cried, and cried. I sat in the back corner and I knit and I listened to all the love and I cried. I couldn’t tell any stories. I wanted to—oh my god I have SO many stories of Bill. But if I had opened my mouth a number of things could have happened. I might have started sobbing and been unable to stop. I might have frozen and been unable to speak. Or I might have started talking and been unable to stop. How could I tell a story just of Bill? Almost every story I have of Bill is also a story of my father, is a story of myself. I would have to have talked about my whole life! My lord, we would have run out of time!

And while I was crying for the loss of Bill, I was also crying because there was so much love in the room. I hope that he knew it. I hope that he knew how many people he had touched. How many people loved him so very much. How many people are who they are, or got where they are, or got out of something that was killing them, in part because of Bill’s gentle patience and willingness to give. He was, as the song says, a man so rare.

—

Edited to add: I have uploaded some photos from that day here.

 
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A Long December

18 Dec

Today would have been my father’s 68th birthday.

Has it been almost seven years? It feels like forever; it feels like yesterday.

Here’s a song I listened to a lot when he was sick -

A long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leaven’
Now the days go by so fast

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

 
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Posted in Souvenirs, birthdays

 

Lorena Spivey Haldeman

24 Nov

I’ve been uploading some old slides to Flickr, and here’s my most favorite picture of G-ma ever (long time readers have seen it before, but hey; it never gets old!) -

Grandmother BadAss

 
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The roads we’ve driven

08 Nov

(Originally posted June 2, 2005)

The roads we’ve driven

All the stories we could tell
If it all blows up and goes to hell
I wish that we could sit upon the bed in some hotel
And listen to the stories we could tell
-Jimmy Buffet

He glanced at the sleeping child in the passenger seat. The soft orange light from the dashboard threw shadows on her face. She had a small stuffed bear cuddled in her arms. What had she said it’s name was…? Ah. Basha. Basha the Bear. She had just gotten it for her… fourth? fifth? birthday.

It was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it, but they were almost home. His home, his wife’s home, and her father’s home. Now to also be her home. It wasn’t much to look at on the outside; old Florida cracker with a tin roof, a wide front porch, and a hand pump outside the back door. It was a mirror of most of the other run-down houses in the area. But it was full of love and laughter and healing, slow evenings drinking warm beer and picking guitar, weekends spent petting the cat and fishing from the small dock down the gravel road.

He woke her up when he saw the alligator who had crawled into the middle of the road, highlighted by the headlights . She was groggy, and it took him a few minutes to explain that they weren’t home yet.

“Is that a mons-tah in the woad?” she asked in her little-girl voice. She clutched at his hand, and he reassured her that they had nothing to fear as long as they stayed in the car. He smiled as she alternately tried to see it over the dashboard and hide from it. They watched it lumber across the road, and she was asleep before he even started the car back up. She slept through arriving at the house, slept through her father carrying her inside while his friend carried the two pillowcases full of clothes, slept through a bed being made for her behind the bookshelves in the corner of her father’s room.

#

When she was about nine or so, he and her father drove across the country with her. They were going to Arizona, and then on for a brief stop in California. He would think later that there must have been more than one tape in the blue VW van, but the only one he remembered was the Kris Kristofferson.

They would wake up in the morning and drive all day, finding a cheap dive to stay in overnight. A few times, they were given the worst rooms at the motels. Two men? With long hair? In a Volkswagon van? Traveling with a little girl? He could hear the whispers as they would leave the motel office. Finally it got to the point where only one of them would go in and get the room. The other one would wait in the car with the girl. One room was particularly memorable in that the yellow carpet – at least, they hoped it was supposed to be yellow – was sopping wet and smelled like dead animals.

“This would make a great short story,” he would say to his friend.

#

When she was about eleven, he came up from Key West to stay with her while her parents went away for a long weekend. Of course, that weekend decided to have a hurricane; the biggest that had hit Florida in years. He packed the girl up and he drove her to his brothers house, a tall rambling wonder full of kids and books and people who would make her feel like family while he drove back down to Key West to get his sweetie. She wouldn’t leave, because they wouldn’t let her take their cat on the bus. He drove almost the whole way in the breakdown lane, because traffic was supposed to only be going one way—away from the hurricane. That road trip showed her about love, responsibility, and bravery, for all that she was only on the first leg of the journey.

#

They were driving out to her father’s farm, one day when she was about sixteen. She was whining, in that way that only teenage girls can do, about how her father totally freaked out on teaching her how to drive; how he was just so freaky when it came to corners because she could never remember if you had to put the clutch in when you wanted to put the brakes on, and how just so unfair it was that he’d decided he wasn’t the right one to teach her how to drive after that first time.

He pulled over to the side of the road and got out.

“You drive,” he said. How bad could it be, on a country road in the middle of nowhere? “Just keep it between the lines,” was his advice. “Keep it between the ditches.”

She did fine. Just fine. He was a good teacher.

#

When she was nineteen, they drove to New Orleans to meet up with her dad and some friends from Key West. She was nervous about driving with him. What if she drove too fast? What if he thought she was a crazy driver? What if…?

“I like driving with you,” he said at one point. “You get us along at a pretty good clip; we’re making great time.”

And they sang along with the radio the whole time. It was a great drive.

#

Is that a metaphor for life? It’s a great drive.

Posted by Lorena on 06/02 at 05:36 AM in Personal, Souvenirs

 
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You think

29 Oct

(Originally posted on April 4, 2007)

You think

You think to yourself, this sucks. And it does.
You think to yourself, this isn’t fair. And it isn’t.
You think to yourself that this man next to you is getting, as Neil wrote, what everyone gets. A lifetime. How much longer is it going to be? And what is the quality going to be like?

You look at his bracelet and see that his birth date is 12/10/43. And you think to yourself, hmm, I always thought it was the 11th. No wonder he always gave you an odd look when you wished him a happy birthday.

You think about how old you were when you met. You were around five. So he must have been around… 31. Younger than you are now. How is it that he had all the answers then, and you, older than that now, have no answers at all?

You think that it is sickly funny that the clock above the door is stuck at 1:32:37. What time do they call out if someone dies?

You think that this has to end. This can’t go on forever. And you think about your outrage that this man is slowly being stripped of his dignity. You think that if you were a different person that you would get angry at God for the sheer unfairness of this man’s suffering. That if you were an even different person, you would pray to God for an end to this man’s pain. But you are who you are, so instead you look inside yourself for strength to help others, and for only grace and love to be felt in your touch and seen on your face.

You think about the other people around. You want to know all their stories. Who are they? Why are they here? What brought them to this moment in time? You think that everybody who is visiting someone else in this hell of an Emergency Room all have one thing in common, that spark of loving someone else.

You think about how fucked up “the system” is, that this man has been waiting 12 hours, naked, shivering under a sheet, howling in pain and begging for help, waiting for a room. That you press the call button for a nurse to please for the love of humanity would you give this man something to take the pain away… and it takes ten minutes for them to walk 25 feet from the desk into the cubicle because they’re so overwhelmed with the seething masses in the waiting room who are forced by whatever lot in life to have to use the ER as a primary care physician.

You think back to a time when this man, or your father, or your aunt or uncle, would have been the one sitting next to the bed of a loved one while other people were at home making sure there was food and love in the house. And you stumble over the thought that you are the adult now. You’re the one who’s going to be doing this, for person after person that you love. And that hurts your heart. But it’s okay, because this; this sitting, this hand-holding, this hair brushing and these tears are what you give to the people that you love. These people who are closer to your heart than your own skin.

You sit and you knit, and you remember an older couple you had seen in the radiation clinic one time, waiting with your father. She had been knitting a blanket while waiting for her husband. This was before you had picked knitting back up from the depths of your childhood, and you were fascinated. She had said that it calmed her down; that it gave her something with which to keep her fingers busy so that her mind wouldn’t make such a commotion. You know just what she means. This stitch is the future. This stitch is for love. This stitch is for loss. This stitch is for carrying on. This stitch is for giggles. This stitch is for having a drink. This stitch is for time ticking by. This stitch is for remembering to breathe.

And you think how lucky you are, that you have such friends waiting for you, who will listen to what you have to say, or read what you need to write, and hold your hand either virtually or in real life. You are so lucky that you’ve opened your heart to love and found such amazing strong feisty fun friends, even those whose faces you’ve not yet seen in person. You love each and every person taking the time out of their day to read this, and you thank them in your mind.

 
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Transcend this

15 Oct

(Originally posted on May 21, 2007)

Transcend this

Here’s a Bill story that I couldn’t tell at his memorial service.

When I was in the 11th grade, I went to P.K. Yonge Laboratory School. (I think they’ve since replaced “Laboratory” with “Developmental Research”; makes the kids feel less like lab rats.) My English teacher was a horrid troll. She was pushy, and perfectionistic, and bitchy, and I couldn’t stand her. She was the best teacher I think I ever had.

One of my assignments one time was to write a report on the religious philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The theme was to be what religion he was, why he chose that religion, and a little bit about the religion. My first stop? The PK library. Where I found absolutely nothing. Every book on Emerson was checked out. To this day I uphold that she had checked the books out herself, because every time I went to her to tell her I was having trouble doing research (this was way before the Internets, yo) she would swear up and down that those books were in the library and not checked out. I kept going back, the books kept not being there. At that time I was riding to and from school with someone else’s parents, and unable to stop at either the public or University libraries. We lived outside of town and the Stepmonster was unwilling to drive into town on the weekends just to take me to the library. So time was running out, and I had to write a few pages on something.

Enter, Bill. Savior of all questioning souls.

I forget exactly if Bill and Doris were living in the little stone house on 5th, that year, or if they were already in the house on 6th that I wound up renting a few years later. Either way, for some reason I was at their house. Bill knew just about every other random, esoteric fact that anyone could ever care to think about asking… so I did.

“What,” I asked, “was the religious philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson…?” Did he know? I had this report due, you see, and here’s why I’m having trouble finding the answer, and…

He gave me a long look.

“Well,” the answer was, “he was a lot of things in his life but for the most part he was a transcendentalist.” Bill proceeded to pull down two or three books from various overburdened shelves around the house, and handed them to me. They were old books, with that musty dusty smell that I love so much, and with them I proceeded to write a paper that snagged me an “A” from the wild-haired troll that ruled my class.

She was genuinely surprised that I was able to find that out. Hence, my belief that she had made sure there was no information in the library.

“How,” she asked as she gripped my report and twitched just a tiny bit, “how did you find this out?”

“I asked Bill,” I said, not bothering to explain to her who Bill was. There is no single word for a man who is as close to you as your own father, who is both father and uncle and friend, who is helper and supporter and finder of obscure information, who is always there for you when you need him but always content to be behind the scenes, never asking for thanks or acknowledgment but making sure that you know he appreciates you when you do thank and acknowledge him.

No, I take that back. There is a single word for a man like that. That word is “Bill.”

 
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