life – Page 16 – p i x e l s c r i b b l e s

I have so much I want to say…

…yet I never seem to find the time or energy to write.

Every day I think of something cool or interesting or important to me that I want to share, and every day that thought gets lost in my little gray cells. Sometimes it doesn’t even make it to Twitter.

So while I have a few free seconds, I’ll mention some of the things on my mind.

Grandma’s funeral and burial and the lunch much of the family had at Cracker Barrel afterwards were all so cathartic for me. I’m so glad I was able to be there for all of it, and so glad Sean came with me. I was able to celebrate Grandma’s life and mourn her death, and now I remember her and what she meant to me all the time, and with a smile.

My first niece will be born at the end of this month, and I am so thrilled. As a feminist and a tomboy, I’m shocked at how much I’m finding myself wanting to buy Daphne cute things and have tea parties with her. I guess all I can do is resolve not to treat her differently when it counts, when it’s a matter of fairness.

My best friend has moved back to Augusta after three years abroad. It is so nice to have her here, so nice to be able to call her up and have lunch or drop by and see her after work like I used to. It’s not exactly the same, of course; she’s married now, and living in a house rather than an apartment. But it’s pretty damn close, and I love it.

Back in September, my host sister from when I lived in Yatsushiro, Japan for three weeks in 2001 came to visit me! Yoko stayed an altogether too short three days; we went to Savannah, enjoyed Augusta’s Arts in the Heart, and went out for Indian food in Atlanta. We got along famously; she’s a huge fan of Arashi, and when I realized who that was and said “Matsumoto Jun!” we immediately bonded ;>

Not too long ago Sean and I went to a family dinner with Sean’s mom and dad, grandmother, grandmother’s sister (great aunt?), and grandmother’s sister’s daughter (second cousin?). It was really nice. I love family dinners. We had great food and looked at family pictures and just had a lovely time.

Sean has a new job teaching IT, which is just what he wanted, so we’re ecstatic. He starts soon, and more details about that will be forthcoming. Things will stay the same for me for awhile, though.

However, I have really ramped up my Japanese study. I study a little every day, with Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) called Anki, the myriad iPhone apps I’ve purchased, and/or James Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji. I also listen to Japanese-language podcasts about humor, pop culture, and cooking and watch Japanese-language media like anime, dramas, music videos, news, and documentaries. But the biggest thing I’ve done is join the Online Speaking Exchange and befriended/followed dozens of Japanese people on Twitter. Reading and responding to their tweets has really helped me overcome shyness and get a good feel for the flow of the language. Plus, I’ve made some really good friends.

As I’ve been looking into various language-learning resources, I ran across Benny the Irish Polyglot’s Fluent in 3 Months, wherein he speaks a lot about Couchsurfing. I am fascinated by the idea of letting people from around the world stay at our home; it sounds like a great way to make friends, practice language skills and learn about different cultures. I may try to talk Sean into it at some point in the future.

To motivate myself a little to become functionally fluent in Japanese, I’ve signed up to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) at level N3 (there are 5 levels). The test is in December and I’m really excited to see how well I’ll do.

That’s probably not even the half of everything I want to share–I haven’t even mentioned the running!–but it’s all I have time for now. Till next time…

Grandma Aubrey 1919-2010

I last saw Grandma three weeks ago, on the final day of my most recent visit to Kentucky. She seemed…like Grandma. Perfectly lucid, dressed nicely, smiling, happy to see me. She gossiped about her neighbors and talked about gardening just as she’d always done as we sat at the patio table in her backyard with my mom and Uncle Steve.

Yesterday, unable to do anything for herself, she was admitted to hospice care, and this morning, she passed away.

I was on the treadmill at the gym when I saw Mom’s note to me on Twitter: “Call me this morning.” It was 7:49. I spent the next hour in a kind of Schrodinger-inspired denial. As long as I didn’t call, there was a chance Grandma was still alive. I finished up on the treadmill, went for a dispassionate swim, came home and took a shower. Throughout these mundane activities my mind whirled with tangential, fragmented thoughts: things I wanted or needed to get done at work, what I needed to do to get home for the funeral. Finally, at 8:47, I called.

“You probably know what this is about,” Mom said.

Eula Florence McCormick Aubrey died at the age of 91 with her daughter Evelyn at her side. She was a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She was preceded into death by her parents, her brothers Bill and Lewis, and her husband Walton, and is survived by daughter Evelyn, sons Ronald (my dad), Stephen and Jeffrey, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Grandma grew up on a farm in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky with her two brothers. She did farm chores and cooked and cleaned and secretly wished her mother would let her sit on the nice couch reserved for guests. Eventually she moved to Lexington to go to school, taking out a room at the YWCA. After marrying my grandfather, who served in the military, she lived in Texas for a time in a white shotgun house. Later the couple moved back to Lexington and Grandma took an accounting job at Bryan Station High School, where she worked for decades.

Grandma was unhappy as she entered her 90s. She was used to doing everything for herself: writing checks, tending to the garden at the very back of her long yard, cooking Sunday dinner. As the years passed she lost not only the ability to do those things, but even the strength to get herself around the house. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for such a self-reliant person to be so dependent on others, and how strongly she must have felt like a burden on her children. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she told my uncle Steve despairingly. She was independent and strong to the end, her mind perfectly clear as long as her heart was pumping enough oxygen, and she knew she was ready to be done with such frailty.

I will always remember my grandmother as a sweet, kind, gentle woman who never raised her voice. Any time she had to scold my brothers and me as children, she did so in a strong but caring voice that evoked sorrow at disappointing her rather than terror. We always felt we could snuggle into her arms.

As children, my brothers and I spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s. One of my strongest memories is Grandma gumming at us, “No teeth!” She’d lost her teeth in her 20s, and usually wore false ones.

My brothers and I inherited the habit of humming thoughtlessly to ourselves from Mom, and Ben still does it to this day. But when we were kids, having dinner around Grandma’s table, and we were all humming different melodies to ourselves at once, it was Grandma who suggested that maybe we shouldn’t hum at the table. It was only then that I even recognized I was doing it; I was so embarrassed that I’ve been conscious of it ever since.

When I was quite young, I had an insatiable sweet tooth, and one day while staying at Grandma’s I snuck a large spoonful of sugar from the sugar bowl she kept on the table. I’d just finished licking the spoon clean (and placing it back in the bowl!) when I heard Grandma behind me.

Guiltily, I turned, head lowered, eyes downcast but flicking up every now and then to gauge the expression on her face. She gave me a gentle smile.

“You don’t need that,” she said. “You’re sweet enough.”

I’m glad you thought so, Grandma. I hope someday I’m even a tenth as sweet as you.

Click here to see a collection of photos of Grandma from 2001 to 2010.

Adventure at Aqueduct Park

I didn’t set out to endanger my own life today, but that’s what ended up happening.

Some time back, Augusta cleaned up the aqueduct between the Augusta Canal and Lake Olmstead and dubbed the area Aqueduct Park. Whitewater rapids spill down a long stretch from the canal into a swimming area that’s also fed by a trickling waterfall on the other side. That pool drains off towards Lake Olmstead, a body of water the size of a pond that sits near the Augusta GreenJackets’ minor league baseball stadium. To get to the park, you either have to travel the Augusta Canal trail by foot or bike, or drive in along a gravel and dirt road from Sibley Mill.

I’d ridden past the area many times on my bike, and even taken a few pictures of the waterfalls and swimmers from up top, but I’d never climbed down to the pool. After the park was established, some trees were cleared, making the climb more inviting. This morning, desperately wanting to swim after my run and having few options–the Family Y doesn’t open until 1 o’clock–I clambered down rocks and dirt to get to the inviting waters below.

I’d cooled off considerably thanks to the air conditioning in my car, so to get back in the mood for swimming I hiked around the aqueduct area and took pictures. I tried to capture the beauty of the place–the rushing waters feeding in from the canal, the old brick tunnels now closed off at the end, the blocks and sheets of slate over which trickling waterfalls painted smooth, wet paths. By the time I was satisfied, I’d warmed back up and was quite ready for a good swim.

Stripping down to my swimsuit and exchanging my tennis shoes for flip-flops, I carried my towel over to where the rocks gradually descended into the pool, laid the towel where I thought it would be most convenient, and then started to step down the rocks to the water.

This was my first mistake.

The rocks were smooth, wet, and covered with slime. As I felt myself slipping, two thoughts occurred to me: one, that the water was very cold, and two, that flip-flops didn’t provide very much traction. I scooted down onto my bottom to try and slide into the water without falling.

It was then that I recognized my second mistake.

Filled with enthusiasm, and perhaps overconfident after successfully climbing all over rocks and waterfalls, I’d chosen to enter the water right next to the canal ingress. Right next to where the barreling flume of water was churning into the pool.

As I sat slipping on the rock, trying to pull off one of my flip-flops, the surging water caught me, thrusting me out and down into the pool. My flip-flop was instantly sucked away. As I struggled to keep my head above water, arms pumping downward to thrust my face out of the rapids, I thought, “If I drown here, like this, I am going to be pissed.”

My efforts were not in vain. I was never completely submerged. At first there was no ground beneath me, and I thrashed in terror to stay afloat, but then, suddenly, I found myself dashed upon the not-at-all smooth array of rocks that makes up the bed of the aqueduct pool.

“Ow,” I said. And then, “Well, I’m stupid.”

As the water continued to push me, gentler now that I was out of the direct path of the flume, I pulled off the other flip-flop for no logical reason, and, holding it, fought my way around the pond. The flume sent water churning in two directions: to the left, off towards Lake Olmstead, and to the right, forming a clockwise eddy circumscribed by the pool. I was caught going right, thankfully. The flume’s strength decreased little by little as I was pushed further and further away; I braced myself on rocks to keep myself steadily on my bottom.

Eventually the water no longer had the strength to push me, and I maneuvered myself to shore–to the spot where I should have entered the pool to begin with. There, the water merely lapped at the rocks and dirt as its final whirlwind strength was sapped away.

“I survived,” I said.

I took a barefoot walk back around the shore of the pool, hoping my flip-flop had washed up somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found. I resigned myself to throwing the other one away…but first I would wash the mud off my feet, clean out the shallow open scrape the rocks had left on my right knee, and get back into my sneakers. I was moving my shoes over to the rocks–the calm area–when I saw it. My flip-flop had somehow been deposited on the rocks right next to the flume. Perhaps during my flailing, I’d actually flung it backwards.

I laughed; somehow finding the other flip-flop was more of a relief than scrambling to shore. Maybe my brain took it as a metaphor of getting out of the situation in one piece.

I washed and dried my feet, tied on my sneakers, retrieved my wayward flip-flop, and began the hike back up and out of the aqueduct.

As I was leaving, a man walking his dog came down the pass. “Wow, I haven’t seen it rushing like this in a long time,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s crazy!”

“It used to be like this all the time when I was a kid,” the man said.

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.” He gestured back up to the top of the flume. “We used to slide down the rocks.”

“Wow,” I said. If that was the case, then kids have been doing essentially what I did today for decades.

Maybe my life wasn’t really in danger. I hope that is of some comfort to my mother, who is probably horrified that this happened. Sorry, Mom.

I’ve learned some good lessons. Don’t walk down slippery rocks, especially in flip-flops. Don’t enter a pool fed by rushing water right next to that rushing water. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to get a good idea of the depth of a body of water before swimming in it.

All that said…I did have fun, and I’ll probably swim there again. :)

View the complete photo gallery here.

What a coincidence

In a freakish coincidence, while complaining about cords being strung all over the living room, I tripped over one.

The incident underscores my general unhappiness with our apartment’s layout. I’m tired of it. It’s boring. The floor plan is a straight shot from the front door to the back door, with minimal natural light and no separation of the living and dining room areas. Sean’s computer is in the living room, and he often connects it to the TV, meaning cords are strung all across the room and computer components are everywhere.

I’d like our apartment to be functional and cozy, easy to clean with a place for everything. I want Sean to be able to use his computer comfortably without his stuff being strewn hither and yon.

Right now Sean’s computer is on our kotatsu, a low Japanese table I bought when we first moved here, thinking it would serve as our dining table. Sean took it over pretty quickly and it’s been his “desk” ever since. But lately, as I said, he’s been using the TV for his monitor and sitting on the couch. The other day I asked him why, and he said the couch was more comfortable.

I decided to try and find a way for him to sit comfortably without taking over the living room, and the first thing I thought of was putting my large desk out in the living room and giving Sean a proper chair. As I was describing this idea to him, I started stepping away from the couch…

…and I tripped over a cord strung between his computer and the coffee table, wrenching a USB connector out of his computer and breaking the guide tab on the port.

Good one.

It’s almost comical. “I hate having wires all over the living room. Let me demonstrate my point!” I didn’t do it on purpose, but the coincidence is ridiculous.

Oh well. At least his computer still works, and he has another USB port he can use. I’m not sure a good solution to the living room arrangement problem will come easily, though. We’ve lived here four years and I’ve rearranged several times. I’m not sure I’ll ever be happy with it.

A transformation

I mentioned before that Sean abruptly announced he wants to have a daughter, as if that had always been the case. Historically, his fierce desire not to have to deal with parenting had always overshadowed any romanticized notions he might have had about raising and pampering a little girl.

Now, he seems enamored with the idea of children. He still only wants one, but he talks about it a lot. A few weekends ago we visited Charles and Heidi in Atlanta, and one of the things we did was get frozen custard at Sheridan’s. A little girl and her mother were there at the same time. Last night, Sean described to me in detail the way the little girl was managing to spoon and eat her own custard. At one point she dug the spoon so far in that she couldn’t get a bite out. She strained at the spoon, willing it to bring the frozen treat to her mouth, digging so hard that finally, all of a sudden, the spoon slid rapidly free of the custard.

“It didn’t fly everywhere, but it could have,” Sean said, miming the little girl’s action and the surprised look on her face. “And the whole time, her mother was just sitting there texting. She missed a neat little scene that will never happen again. I guess that’s what happens; you start to tune them out. It’s sad, really.”

I don’t know if Sean and I will be able to have a child, or what will come of any possible adoption efforts. I spent many years trying to talk myself out of wanting kids. Now that Sean is where I was, I’m engaging in these discussions of parenting and not worrying about whether or not it will actually happen. My years of struggle have simply tempered the fun we’re having, making our conversations into hypotheticals rather than plans. For now, I’m not thinking any further. I’m not getting my hopes up. I’m just enjoying a refreshing change in my husband.

A challenge changes shape

I have always wanted to be a mother. I like to tell people that I’ve thought about having children since I was a child, because it’s true and because it sounds good. I like to read about teaching methods and childhood development and what effects experience can have on personality and learning. I often think about what sort of environment I want to provide for my children, how I want them to feel comfortable and safe and loved, and how I’d like to foster in them a love of exploration and creation and imagination. To this day, when I hear about a fun trip or project, I think about doing it with my kids.

Two things came along in my life to derail my assumptions. Neither of them managed to snuff out my dreams, no matter how hard they tried. But together, it seemed that they would see to it that my dreams never became a reality.

The first thing, of course, was cancer. I was diagnosed with biphenaltypic leukemia in 1997, and the three rounds of chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant I underwent to conquer that disease effectively destroyed my ovaries–or, perhaps, the eggs inside them. I only have regular periods when I’m on hormone replacements, and despite having nothing but unprotected sex throughout my seven-year marriage to Sean, we have never had so much as a miscarriage.

Through my struggles with this reality, Sean always told me to face reality, to try to be happy without my dream. Sean didn’t want children; that was the second thing.

He never wanted kids. Never dreamed about it, never thought about it except when I talked about it. The most he would ever agree was that he’d accept it if I happened to get pregnant; aggressive fertility treatments and adoption simply weren’t things he was interested in. There was a time when I tearfully tried to express just how important having children was to me…he was silent for a time and then said quietly, “I didn’t think it was a deal-breaker.”

It wasn’t, of course. I knew how Sean felt when I married him. I married him because I loved and still love him, not because I expected him to give me everything I wanted. I’ve come to realize that Sean doesn’t fully grasp how much I love him, how leaving him to pursue one of my dreams simply isn’t an option.

And so, over the past ten years as I struggled with the knowledge of my infertility and had doors slammed in my face with every test, I was alone. Sean ached for me, but never with me. He wanted me to be happy. He wanted me to forget about having kids and just enjoy my life with him.

In a way, that made it a little easier. At least that way, if I couldn’t give him children, I wasn’t disappointing him.

But that part of the equation fell away last weekend, when Sean said, as if I’d known it all along, “I still want to have a daughter one day. Just one. Of course, with my luck, we’d end up with a boy. I’d like us to be able to have a kid, but if that’s not possible…I would be okay with adoption.”

We’ve got a lot going on right now. We’re planning to move across town, and Sean’s trying to get a certification and move on with his career. Once that’s settled I will be undergoing elective surgery. We won’t be ready to try expensive fertility treatments for a year after that.

But that’s the plan now. It may be too late…or it may never have been possible. But we’ll try.

And if that fails, it looks like we’ll be adopting.

I honestly don’t know how to feel. This isn’t a too-good-to-be-true situation, but it’s still so much more than I was led to expect these past ten years.

My world view, which for so long has felt so narrow, seems suddenly to have expanded. If I just turn my head, I feel like I could see it all.

But I can’t bring myself to go all-in just yet. Not with all the disappointments I’ve already gone through.

At this point I will clamp down and allow myself only the tiniest cautious flicker of hope.

The battle within

Lately I have been struggling with things I want to do, things I need to do, things I absolutely have to do, and things I think I should do. I’ve been stressed and unhappy for most of this week, a striking contrast to last week, when I felt like I could do anything. I ended up burning out and crashing hard and it sucked.

I feel like I go through cycles of mood and competence. Normally it doesn’t flip so fast from week to week, though.

I’m reevaluating lots of things. What do I definitely want, and how can I get it? What things do I have to do every day to make those goals happen? Is there anything I can cut out to save time and energy?

Moving to North Augusta would help–I would be able to walk or bike to work, maximizing my commute by combining it with exercise. But I doubt it will solve all my problems.

So here I am at Boll Weevil, seeking comfort in warm familiarity, settling in with a Curious George, chips, and tea.

I hope I can figure this out.