From Commuter Husband to Mr. Mom

After spending sixteen months as a commuter husband, living and working in Arizona while my middle aged Special Needs daughter and I remained in Washington, my husband Dave scarce had time to draw breath on his return than to begin his new duties as a co-Mr. Mom to our grandson Gabriel while my daughter-in-law hurried to Brazil to support her critically ill mother.  If that sentence leaves you breathless, it is intentional.  We have been on a whirlwind that begs the question of whether or not this is retirement for him.

Even though Ana didn’t leave for a day after Dave’s return, that day was filled with the internment of both of Dave’s parents while she hurriedly packed.  This was followed the next day by a memorial celebration of his father’s life (we did his mother’s in September) while Ana was attempting to get out of a socked in SeaTac.

The role of Mr. Mom will be a bit new for Dave.  Although he is one of seven sons and has four grown step children, being responsible for Gabriel during the day for at least a month will be a first.  Gabriel is homeschooled and has many activities during the day, particularly on Tuesdays.  I predict that they will collapse in a heap after play practice (Gabriel is appearing as the chubby German boy in Willy Wonka—which is a stretch for a tall skinny Brazilian-American) for three hours at the Lakewood Little Theater followed by the Gig Harbor Youth Orchestra followed by his group violin lesson.  GranDave will have to make sure to take a thermos of coffee and plenty of reading material.

Amidst his many activities Gabriel is homeschooled so GranDave will be acting as schoolmarm, too.  Because my son Frank is a school teacher himself in the Lakewood School District and beginning his National Boards certification he can only be responsible for Gabriel in the evenings and with the National Boards, sometimes not even then. I have a job as a para educator in the Peninsula School District so the daytime duties for Gabriel’s care will fall on my husband’s shoulders although we ought to be able to tag-team some things.

Today we are starting easy.  I have another day of bereavement leave and Gabriel has only his private violin lesson.  We plan to take my daughter and him to the $2 movie this morning, followed by lunch at Subway before the violin lesson.  Although I can take Gabriel to his group lesson tomorrow after work, the bulk of Tiring Tuesday will fall to GranDave.  When Ana asked Dave to step into this role he was in the process of helping bring his father’s remains home.  He didn’t hesitate a second to say, yes because he saw his own brother put his life on hold for six months to care for their ailing parents.  As my blogging friend Lorrene LeMaster has said, families are like chainlink fences and you can’t let the links break if the fence is to stay strong.

The End of an Odyssey 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aNQjoDaX1-k

“Ana’s mother needs a triple by-pass so she needs to go [to Brazil].  She wants Gabriel to stay here and keep his life as normal as possible.  She’s wondering if he can stay with you during the day while Frank and I are at work,” I said into my cell phone to my husband Dave, who is driving home from his odyssey as a commuter husband that’s lasted sixteen months. 

“Absolutely,” Dave said.  “I was just talking to Phil about how he and Eva put their lives on hold for the last six months to take care of our parents.  That’s what families do.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s what I told Ana.  She cried.”

We’ve all been crying too much of late.  When Dave made the decision to return to work in June of 2012 it was to pay off some debt and give him some closure with his job which had ended abruptly when Lockheed Martin closed Seattle Flight Service and moved their services to Prescott, AZ.  It was devastating for me personally, but despite my belief that it would not get easier, it did.

At that time I told him that our parents were aging and fragile, especially his mother, and that it was possible that one or more of them might die while he was gone.  As it turns out, both of Dave’s parents passed during his time in Arizona.  Fortunately, he was able to see them several times and was actually at home in Gig Harbor when his mother died in August.  I am glad that he was not alone.  He was not so fortunate, when a day shy of a month later, his father joined his mother.  In the words of his brother Corky, it seemed that he could not do without her.

We are comforted by the fact that Dave’s brother Phil and his sister-in-law Eva stepped in to care for the boys’ parents when their mom’s health took a nose dive in April.  I know that their loving care of Walt and Dottie eased the guilt that Dave felt about being 1,500 miles away and prolonged their mother’s life by several months.  Actually, Phil and Eva uprooted their lives to come from Temecula, California to care for the parents.  They have been the embodiment of how we ought to all treat our loved ones.  They put their lives and creditors on hold because caring for my in-laws was more important than anything as far as they were concerned.  Ultimately my mother-in-law said, “Phil, you need to go home and we’ll go with you.”  That is how it came to be that both of the boys (there are seven brothers) parents died in Temecula and how it came to be that three of the boys—Dave included—are bringing their father’s ashes back to the Puget Sound area for internment with their mother at Tahoma National Cemetery tomorrow.

 

The trip back to Washington has been a sentimental journey for the boys (if you can call men in their sixties boys) and a fitting end to Dave’s time in Arizona.  Phil, the romantic and most tender hearted of the bunch, decided that the best way to return the parents’ motorhome and their father’s ashes was to take Walt on one last road trip, stopping along the way to visit with family including the graves of both grandparents in Idaho and Eastern Washington.  Dave left Arizona on Sunday and in Sacramento on Monday met Phil and Eva who had picked up Steve who’d flown in from Seattle.  They stayed with cousins and then began caravanning home. Tuesday was their long day.  They drove for nineteen hours, only stopping for dinner in Salem, Oregon where they met my best friend, who grew up with all of us, and had dinner. 

Of their stop my friend Nikki wrote, “It was a privilege to spend time with all of them and hear them reminisce about their parents.  Phil got teary eyed when he talked about Walt dying--I could tell he was a feeler!  Eva is very sweet and Steve was quite thoughtful about everything.  It is really a beautiful tribute to their parents and such a touching way to honor them.  Just because the others haven't joined in will never, ever take away from what these 3 brothers have done--together.  They will always have this memory and will be helped in their grieving by doing this.”

They pressed on until midnight where they stopped in Walla Walla before going on to Lewiston/Clarkston where their mother grew up. 

Yesterday they went to Nez Perce, Idaho where their father was born and raised, visiting the graves of their grandparents.  It was on their way there that I was able to get ahold of Dave and tell him about our daughter-in-law’s mother.  He did not hesitate for a second to say that he would become the grandpa version of Mr. Mom, seeing that Gabriel gets to his lessons and activities and does his homeschool work.  The events of the past year and a half have changed all of us in many ways. 

It seems like we will have little time to catch our breaths from Dave’s Arizona odyssey and the internment and memorializing of his parents before he steps into his role as stay-at-home-grandpa.  He’s coming home none-too-soon!

Changing Seasons

My husband Dave’s birthday is on or just after the first day of Fall.  Perhaps that is why his mother began baking him plum sauce cake for a birthday cake.  Certainly the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves fill the house with an aroma that speaks Autumn’s name.

Originally Dave, who has been living and working in Arizona since June of 2012, had planned to drive to his brother’s in Temecula, CA on his birthday to see his parents while they were visiting there.  I had planned to mail the cake there.  Then Dave’s mother died on August 17^th.  She’d been unwell for some time, but seemed to be coming back in inches.  Dave had gone to see her and his dad just the week before.  I am grateful that this first injury occurred while he happened to be at home surrounded by our household.

I remember when I first met Dave’s parents.  I told them that I was happy to meet the people who’d raised such a nice son and on top of that raised seven of them!  My four paled by comparison.  I went on to discover that all of the boys were not just nice, but extraordinary in their humor, sense, and hearts. I still believe that they are marvelous people because they were raised by marvelous people.  They’ve only to look at each other and see what gifts their parents gave to them—each other.  As an only child, I believe I know what that means.

Dave, the second of the seven, had joked that had he been a girl there would have only been two Haeck offspring.  Dottie laughed and said, “Noooo, that’s not true.  I just love children.”  That is the truth.  She loved children so much that besides raising her own seven she did daycare for neighborhood children.  Some of them attended her memorial and spoke with such love of this little woman.

Early in our marriage Dottie gave me the recipe for plum sauce cake neatly printed on old fashioned recipe cards—we didn’t have a computer then.  Today as I looked at those cards and measured and mixed Dave’s cake I felt her presence and although I know that this cake will be little compensation for losing a mother, much less losing both parents—for today, one month after Dottie’s passing, Dave’s dad joined her, her name on his lips. 

I am grieved that Dave is 1,500 miles from those who love him this night when he is feeling so, so, alone.  I cannot hug or comfort him—only bake a cake that I’ll put in the mail tomorrow for his birthday on Sunday.  I know from experience the cake won’t make Dave’s heart heal for nothing ever truly heals these losses. As the seasons of the Earth are changing so is the season of Dave's life and I hope that in the cake he’ll taste the memories of other birthdays when everyone he loved was still alive.

 

Taking Care of Business Every Day

If you are a Baby Boomer and are lucky enough to still have living parents, chances are their health and welfare is becoming more and more your responsibility. I am a 62-year-old only child of a mother who will be 91 a less than a week and I live 150 miles from her.  Hopefully within the next year my husband, daughter and I will be moving nearer, but in the meantime we are dealing with the issues that come up with having a parent age.  From this distance it’s a little like juggling cats against the backdrop of working as Special Education Para educator, having an adult child with Special , and having a husband living and working 1,500 miles away for the last year and a half.  I have what is known as a "commuter marriage."  Every day requires the planning of a general.  Fortunately I have some officers in the form of a son and daughter-in-law who live with us and another son and daughter-in-law twenty minutes away.  Many family caregivers are not so fortunate.

So far my mother has remained relatively independent, living alone in her own subsidized apartment with a minimum of help.  She does not desire to go into an assisted living arrangement and we are doing whatever we can to keep her where she is for as long as possible.  “Other people die in this building.  Why can’t I,” she has asked.  Keeping track of her deductible expenses to keep her qualified for her low rent has fallen to me as well as bill paying, although we've managed to make most of that automatic.

In 1985 my mother had a serious bout of cellulitis fueled by MRSA.  To this day we don’t know how she contracted it, but it rears its ugly head from time to time and I have to be prepared to get her seen by a doctor when it happens and monitor her recovery.  If the doctor doesn’t order home health and a visiting nurse, I ask.  My mother is not a good reporter and will sugar coat things on the phone so I want trained eyes to see her blisters and whether or not they are getting better.  That’s the fun we’ve been having right now—organizing a visiting nurse.

The health is a big issue and in addition to home health I pay for a medic alert device and it’s been worth every penny.  After doing some research on the Internet I chose Get Help Now because they didn’t require a long term contract.  With an elderly person you could sign up for three years and be stuck with a couple of years contract when they pass.  We are on a six month contract which seems far more reasonable.

When my mother began to take multiple medications at first I counted pills.  This was nerve wracking especially when she attempted to do it and I found mistakes that either of us had made.  Then I discovered that for very little extra the pharmacy will blister pack her medications.  She gets two cards each month, one for the morning and one for the evening.  That was a good sized stone lifted off of me!

Some things as small and yet as huge as garbage can be daunting.  My mother, with some effort, can get her garbage out of the kitchen can and on a good day onto her walker to take down in the apartment building elevator, but lifting the lid of the big green dumpster is a no-go.  It’s not all that easy for me!  She asked a neighbor if we could pay her to take out the garbage and so for a pittance she puts the bag in the hall and it disappears.  The neighbor needs the money and my mother definitely needs the help.  Without this arrangement Mother could not remain in her own place.

Laundry is another problem.  My mother has toppled over in the laundry room.  Through a local agency that assists the old and infirm we hire someone to spend 1.5 hrs. per week at my mom’s, mostly doing laundry.  If need by we’ve stretched her fixed income to cover 2 hrs. but it is a stretch.  This week the chore person is taking my mother to the doctor so the laundry will be waiting for me when I make my bi-weekly run to the coast to shop and do whatever else she needs.  I don’t mind.  I’m glad that my mother doesn’t have to take dial-a-ride to the doctor because sometimes she has to wait as long as an hour to get a ride home which is tiring.

With both my mother and my daughter letting them make decisions is crucial so that they maintain a sense of autonomy.  In other words I pick my battles to build political capital for times when I have to insist. “Are you going to have a shower this morning or wait until tonight?” vs. “No, is not an option.”  In my job I have seen what not letting an individual feel that they have any control over their life can do.  You end up with behaviors you don’t want and contention that makes life unpleasant for everyone concerned.  It’s all part of my juggling act.  I will be so grateful when my husband’s time away from home is done and I have him as a helpmate.  Both my mother and daughter react differently to him which makes me laugh, but whatever gets the job done.

Recently my husband’s parents became in need of 24 hour care.  Instead of seeing his parents go into an institution or adult family home, which they most definitely did not want, one of my brothers-in-law and his wife stepped up to the plate and left their lives on hold to care for my in-laws.  Their care has been nothing short of extraordinary.  They kept them first in the parents’ own apartment and then took them into their own home where they could be assisted by their own adult son.  With a dying mother and a father suffering from short term memory loss they have had their hands full, but they have cared for them with patience and love they would not receive from strangers in an institution.  I stand in awe of them and wonder if I could do the same.

Many nights I lose sleep wondering about those I love.  Tonight I will sleep well as my mother has organized her own ride to the doctor tomorrow to get wound care.

Tomorrow is the First Day of the Rest of My Life

 

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life--trite, but true.  Tomorrow is the first day of my last school year working as a Special Education para educator.  I have mixed emotions as I like my job.  Actually, I have the best job in school district because I work with the best student in the best high school.  I have amiable workmates who are the cherries on my work sundae.  So why not keep working?  The reasons are multiple.

Unfortunately, retiring and collecting both my Social Security and my retirement will actually give me a raise.  I have always joked and said that if I kept working much longer the district would expect me to pay them.  I wasn’t far off the mark.  I will be 63 in February so am already eligible to collect SS.  When I first began working with my student when he was a freshman I told him that I wouldn’t retire on him, that we’d graduate together.  He has come to be very dear to me and makes each day a joy.  He says that between the two of us we make one good brain.  That makes me laugh.  I am his hands; he is the brains in our outfit and very forbearing to tolerate spending the better part of 6.5 hours of his days with an old lady.  In some other life he could have been my grandson.  Tomorrow he begins his senior year which means nine more months to help him prepare to make his way in the world.  He will always need and have help, but it’s time for him to spread his wings and find his path, even if it is in a wheelchair.

For over a year I have been living in a commuter marriage.  In June 2012 my husband Dave and I determined that it was necessary for him to return to work for Lockheed Martin to help pay some debts.  He had retired when Lockheed closed their Seattle Flight Service, but had offered him jobs in other facilities over the years.  Finally it seemed an offer that couldn’t be refused, especially when we discovered that he could rent a room from an old friend from his FAA Bakersfield days who happened to be working at the Prescott, AZ facility that offered Dave the job.  The year plus of having a commuter marriage, which I discovered is not all that uncommon (not a good commentary on American life), has been a year of learning for both of us.  Dave admits that in the beginning there was a certain amount of excitement with regards to living somewhere new for a while.  That wore off somewhat rapidly when he realized that life was going on at home without him where grandchildren were growing and changing and I was learning to do without him.  That has not always been easy.  He is home for a few days to attend his mother’s funeral and admitted that he doesn’t want me to get along too well without him.  Anxious to feel needed he had not even unpacked before he started doing chores around the house as if he’d never left.  We get by without him, but I am the first to admit that life is much smoother with him.  Originally Dave’s move to Prescott had an end date of his 62^nd birthday (SS) this month, but a little raise has enticed him to stay into October to sell back his annual leave at the higher rate and get two more pay checks so it’s home before Halloween now with the plan for him to do some projects on our Gig Harbor house with an eye for selling it. Then we can move to our other house in Ilwaco, WA which will presumably be cheaper to live in.

The move to Ilwaco will also put me within six blocks of my nearly 92 year old mother who so far is remaining in her own apartment.  Every time I have to come away from Ilwaco I worry about her despite the fact that we pay for a chore person once a week, one of the neighbors to take out the garbage and for a medic alert system.  This week we are burying Dave’s mother whose birthday would have been Friday, just 11 days before my mother’s.  I don’t think I will ever regret spending more time with mine.

The last, but most important, reason for me to want to quit my job is my own Special Needs daughter.  Amy is 42.5 years old and has Down’s Syndrome.  The average life expectancy for people with an extra 21^st chromosome is 50.  I feel the clock ticking.  She can be frustrating and stubborn and loves me more than anyone ever will.  She is a gift with whom I want to spend as much time as possible.  There have been times during Dave’s absence that she’s been alone for 7 hours a day at home, although for the most part my daughter-in-law has been at home with her.  While she’s happiest with her own company and knows she can reach me at any time by calling my cell phone and I am only ten minutes away, those have been anxiety ridden hours.  Dave is not Amy’s biological father, but she has him wrapped around her tiny pinkie and one of the things that made me fall in love with Dave was a remark he made when we were first “keeping company.”  He said, “It’s nice.  You’ll always have Amy.”  Who could not love a man that thinks it’s not only okay to have my child always with me, but desirable and then was willing to take on a ready-made family that included her three brothers and grandmother.  Perhaps I’m lucky that he didn’t run away and join the circus before 21 years had passed!

So tomorrow begins the first day of the rest of my life and my last first day of school.  How exciting is that?

Looking Toward the Firsts and the Lasts

 

Amy’s and my summer at the shore is coming to an end.  We are getting ready to head home to Gig Harbor so that I can go back to work at Gig Harbor High School.  This time of year is always filled with mixed emotions for me.  I like my job.  I assist the most amiable eighteen year old student who is forbearing with an aide who is an old lady.  This will be our fourth year together and other than a new schedule, we have our ways of getting things done and have been together long enough to finish each other’s sentences.  We have similar senses of humor.

The past few days the weather has been cool and even a bit rainy which would make my husband, was he here, sad, but it does not me.  Yesterday afternoon as I dozed on the couch before a DVD a sound reached my ears which I’d not heard for a long time.  For more than 20 years I’ve tried to discover that it is on our front porch that creaks in the wind to no avail.  It is a slow creak as I would imagine the ropes of a sailing ship creaking against a wooden mast as the ship rocks upon the water rather in keeping with the fact that our 132 year old house is two blocks from the Port of Ilwaco.  I have come to love the sound, but was surprised to hear it since the sun had been making a gallant effort to make an appearance when I’d set the sprinkler to watering the garden which I needn’t have bothered with.  Now it was raining.

Returning to a job I enjoy is some compensation for leaving the creaking house by the sea that I love as is the turning of the seasons.  I realize that Autumn does not officially begin until September 22^nd (my husband’s birthday) this year, but my favorite season is whispering her name and leaves from the birch tree are littering the yard between the house and the barn.  I took the combination of Mother Nature’s behavior as signs that it was the time to shift some things inside from Summer to Autumn mode.  Out are coming my harvest table runners, table clothes and napkins along with my collection of pumpkins and turkeys and my happy Autumn crow.  Once I am back in my routine of work and coming to Ilwaco to help my almost 91 year old mother, I have little time for what I call “playing house” otherwise known as decorating.

One twist on the end of Summer this year is that our financial advisor says that I can make this my last year of working for the school district.  As a matter of fact between my retirement and Social Security, I will get a little raise.  It will mean living frugally because Dave is also leaving his job at Lockheed Martin in Prescott, AZ where he’s been since June of ’12 and returning to Gig Harbor to begin collecting his Social Security, along with his retirement from the FAA.  We will soon be embarking on a new phase of our life as we shift our lives from Gig Harbor to Ilwaco.  There will be the sadness of having the children and grandchildren farther away, but Dave is certain that we can live more cheaply in our house by the sea than in an upscale suburb. 

Mostly I want to be nearer to my elderly mother and spend more time with my Special Needs daughter.  The average life expectancy of an individual with Down’s Syndrome is 50.  Amy is 42.5 years and I bless each day with her.  She can be extra work, infuriatingly stubborn, and loves me more than anyone ever will.  I would not trade one day with her for any other day so regardless of finances or other inconveniences; I am excited about the changes to come.  It will undoubtedly be a time of firsts and lasts.

 

The Commuter Marriage Continues

 

 

 

Once again my husband, Dave, is heading back to his “other life” in Arizona.  He was home for seventeen days.  Now I feel as though I am in suspended animation without him.  His next scheduled return is in August, three and a half months hence and promises to be our longest separation yet since we began this “commuter” portion of our marriage.

 

When we made the decision for Dave to go to AZ to work it was devastating.  I saw a story on our local news about “commuter marriages” just days before his departure and heard a wife say that over time it becomes easier.  I didn’t believe it.  I did not want it to be so because I did not want this drastic change in our lives to become “normal.”  It has become easier and it is not normal, only tolerable.  It is a sensitive tooth that flares into full-blown pain from time to time, but mostly sits there aching.

 

The seventeen days of Dave being home were a whirlwind with us spending the first portion at our house on the Long Beach Peninsula getting things crossed off Dave’s honey-do list down there and then returning to Gig Harbor to work on that honey-do list.  As he heads back there are still things undone, but everywhere I see his hand in making our lives better.  You know, I don’t mind the fir needles and cones on the driveway, but I find a clean driveway comforting because it means Dave is around.

 

 

Dave leaves knowing that he may be returning at any point due to the advanced age and health of his parents and my mother.  That is something we talked about nearly a year ago when we began this adventure.  It is why my taking my Special Needs daughter and going to Arizona with him was never part of the discussion.  I am an only child and so my mother has no one else to rely on.  Dave has six brothers, five of whom live near to their parents—relatively speaking.  While he was home his mother’s health declined.  On our last visit Sunday she seemed to have improved a tiny amount.  I am grateful that he can leave, holding onto this tiniest thread of hope that she will be better still when he returns in August.  I hang onto that thread as well as I do not want him to be alone at the time of such a loss.

 

 

 

Dave's intention is to quit working the end of September.  That is not cast in concrete.  We were unable to meet with our financial advisor while Dave was home, but after a phone conversation with him we have some homework to do and an appointment in August when we can map out what is next in this adventure.  Stay tuned.

Now How the Heck Did I Do That??

 

Bette Davis famously said that aging wasn’t for sissies.  At age 62 I quote her often.  Recently I added injury to the insults of age related aches and pains by injuring the muscles along my left tibia.  A search of the Internet reveals that this irritation and resulting pain is caused by "strenuous activity."  I would not have said that I engaged in that.

There is no denying that I do a lot of walking.  As an aide to a special needs high school student I hike all over campus while he zooms along in a power wheelchair.  When I am home I am busy with work around our houses and I cannot deny that having my husband Dave working 1,500 miles away oft times leaves me exhausted, frustrated and resentful but I would not have said that I was engaging in strenuous activity. 

When the pain first began I thought, “My goodness, I’ve pulled something.  How inconvenient.”  I did what I usually do with pain.  I ignored it.  It began the Thursday before Easter.  On Friday my own Special Needs daughter and I drove to the coast where our “someday retirement” home is.  My other children were unavailable for various reasons, but we’d come to celebrate Easter with my mother who lives six blocks from our house.  Saturday was a perfect day to give our two lots large lawn its first mow of the year.  It took two and a half hours to plow through the thick and somewhat damp “back forty,” as I call the back yard which stretches from our barn and cottage on one lot to our main house on the other, with our electric mower.  I decided that the front, smaller but more complicated due to flower beds and walkways, would have to wait until Sunday as we had guests coming for dinner.

My leg had hurt during the whole process, but I’d trudged along as I always do, drinking lots of water and breaking to scrape the grass off the underside of the mower.  Our company was Kathleen Arseneaux and her daughter Stacey came to dinner which I’d largely prepped while waiting for the grass to dry (which it never entirely did).  Toward the end of last summer I’d engaged Stacey to help me with the gardening.  Stacey doesn’t mind weeding whilst I loathe it, mostly because I can’t get on my knees with any reasonable expectation of getting up again without calling the Ilwaco FD.  Over dinner Stacey offered to mow the front the next day and I gratefully accepted.

So I went literally limping along in pain, doing all the things that I’d got used to having help with before Dave went away ten months ago.  The pain finally began to take a toll on me.  Sometimes it left me nauseous and by the end of my work day it was leaving me wanting to cry.  If I’d had time.  There were still chores at home to accomplish before I gratefully put my leg to bed, only to begin the process again the next day.  Finally, I emailed our doctor and received a reply from her PA as the doctor was out for the week.  She encouraged me to go to Urgent Care which I finally did next day, a week to the day from when I’d first noticed the pain.

Shin splints the Urgent Care doctor said after reviewing X-rays that revealed no hairline fractures.  To immobilize my foot and give the tissue a chance to heal she had me put in an ortho boot making me think of astronauts walking on the moon.  I hobbled to garage, got into the car and tried out my new footwear on the clutch of my Neon.  No, if I tried to drive from Tacoma Group Health to our home in Gig Harbor I’d likely get into a wreck along the way so I peeled off all the Velcro straps the nurse had spent so much time adjusting and used the clutch with my bum leg.  It already hurt and while it was getting no better, it seemed to be getting no worse.  The Neon is in the garage and I'm driving our truck, which is an automatic.

So now, until it is healed, I am hobbling around on my new boot, petrified I’ll fall down our stairs and actually break something this time.  And there are still things to do.  Dave is coming home for a visit a week from today so there’s cleaning and dusting I want to do and a birthday cake to order for my father-in-law and daughter.  To quote another old lady, my mother, “There’s no rest for the wicked.”

Another Holiday without Dad

 

 

 

Easter is coming and another holiday without Dave.  He was home for ten days in February which included my birthday and he will be home next month for another ten for Spring Break and his father's 94th birthday. After that we will have a long dry spell until his August vacation.

 

In June it will be a year since the hurried decision for him to go from our home in Gig Harbor to Prescott, AZ in order to go back to work for Lockheed Martin.  Through frugalness during these past nine months we’ve been able to pay off the home equity loan we had so that our house by the sea is paid for—again. 

 

Modern technology has kept us in touch.  I marvel at the Greatest Generation and wonder at how relationships stayed in tact with only sketchy mail from far flung soldiers during WWII over the course of four years.  Although cell phone reception is dodgy where Dave is living he is able to call and text me from work and because he has Internet access where he lives with a friend he can email me before we both go to sleep at night.  He can’t mow the lawn through technology, but at least we can share our news of the day.

 

So over the weekend I baked cookies for Dave, boxed them up in a shoebox and sent them off.  He received them today, along with a packet of newspapers and magazines that keep him connected to Gig Harbor and Ilwaco.  Sunday morning I’ll take pictures of my daughter Amy and my Grandson Gabriel with their Easter baskets and pass around the phone at dinner at my mother’s.  Spring Break is just around the corner, after all.

New Year's Diets

 

 

The Winter Solstice came and went without the World ending.  Winter is a time for turning inward and nurturing our interior lives so that we can bloom in the Spring.  It is probably not accidental that we celebrate New Year’s at this time of year or that most people’s thoughts turn to creating better lives in some way.  The dark days and nights give us time inside our homes and heads to think about what we can do to improve ourselves, our community and the World.  If this is a new era, as was actually the Mayan’s belief, then are we not each of us a part of that?  If we make our own lives better are we not making our community better as well?

Like most people my New Year’s goals are always to be physically healthier.  Actually, I’ve been working on that since my life hit a perfect storm of my husband leaving to work out of state and my discovery of some health issues that have caught up to my Baby Boomer body.  I’ve managed to lose some weight, am working on keeping my blood pressure down (not an easy feat with Dave 1,500 miles away) so that there’s no further damage to my heart and eyes, and getting my right eye treated for an occluded vein.  A friend recently asked me how I was keeping from over indulging in the sweet goodies of the season.  It’s simple.  I don’t want to die just yet.  I’d like to live long enough to enjoy my husband’s company when we are living together again.

The other sort of health that we are working on is fiscal health.  The reason that Dave went from our home in Gig Harbor, Washington to Prescott, Arizona was to get our finances in better order for retirement.  The bursting of the real estate bubble and the “Great Recession” of 2008 deflated our plans for retirement.  We are several years behind in our plans for selling our Gig Harbor home (or even the ability to do so) and moving to our 131 year old Victorian cottage by the sea. 

Since Dave left in June of this year there have been some glitches along the way including a hiking accident he had in Arizona necessitating him coming home for surgery, going on short term disability (less money), and trying to get compensated for out of state physical therapy.  We also saw this Christmas as a last time to give generously albeit not excessively.  With the beginning of what is supposed to be Dave’s last nine months as a “commuter husband” we are working toward the birth of fiscal stability and the creation of a new life and maybe a new bathroom in our antique house.  Nothing fancy, but our current one was installed in the former pantry when indoor bathing was instituted in the house.  I’d like the pantry back to its intended function and a shower that is actually supposed to be a shower and not a shower head nailed to a piece of 2X4.

By living frugally in Arizona, Dave has been able to pay down our home equity loan from $43,000 to $8,000 today.  Having a debt-free retirement home should be a piece of cake, but we’d like that bathroom as well so the challenge is to spend as little and save as much as possible.  In the past when I have written about frugality for the Tacoma News Tribune I have been accused of attempting to undermine the American economy.  I have actually been called un-American.  It seems to me that as American individuals we have spent our way into the situation of the past four years through over-consumption, easy loans, and living beyond our means.

So our physical diet and rehabilitation will be accompanied by a fiscal diet and rehabilitation as we head into what I hope will be lucky ’13.  My mother-in-law called it “making a penny scream.”  I spent enough time as a low/no income single mother to know how to do that.  I can make do pretty well and while I’m not disposed to go to the extremes of those on The Learning Channel’s “Extreme Cheapskates” (I will NOT recycle tush wipes), I can cut the fat out of both sorts of diets.  I'm not sure whether or not the nation should or will go off the fiscal cliff.  Maybe everyone should count on a fiscal diet...oh, yeah, that would make everyone unAmerican.

I believe that the main reason “New Year’s Resolutions” fail is our belief that a day or two of falling off our wagon means failure.  Every new day can be a New Year’s as long as the sun comes up and now that we’ve learned that the Ancient Mayans saw us as not ending, but as entering a new era we can make each day a new beginning.  Things to ponder as sleep our Winter's nap with dreams of Spring.

Under the

Christmas Tree

Every morning there are crows in our Ilwaco yard—lots of them.  I like them because they are funny, smart (supposedly as smart as a dog) and they eat the grubs in the grass that will end up being annoying crane flies, which I do not like.  We’ve never had a satisfactory name for our house by the sea and so one morning I lit on the notion of calling our house Crow Cottage.  In all honesty I like the alliteration, too.  Because I have two artist sons, this Christmas I put a sign saying “Crow Cottage” on my Christmas list.  We draw names and my fingers were crossed that one of them would get my name.

 I was pleased beyond words when I opened my gifts from eldest son Joshua at our family celebration.  Besides the first two seasons of Downton Abbey, there was the wished for sign.  It was exactly as I envisioned and even better because he made the background a soft purple, my favorite color.  I actually wanted it for the outside of the house, but this one had been done in paint that won’t stand up to the weather.   “No matter,” my best friend said when she saw it, “You need it in the kitchen where you can see it all the time.”  She proceeded to climb on a chair and hang it above a doorway.  My birthday is in February and I’m going to hint for an identical sign done in weather resistant paint.

There is one other gift that touched me and that one was a total surprise.  My youngest was asleep when I went to work the day of his departure so along about the time I knew that Joshua had deposited Nadir and my husband Dave at SeaTac to fly back to CA and AZ respectively, I texted Nadi that I was sorry to have missed hugging him goodbye.  In truth, I could have wakened him, but I am sure I would have cried which distresses him and why while I pick him up when he arrives; I no longer take him to the airport when he leaves.  He responded that he’d left a little something extra under the tree when I left.  I found it and put it into the car with other Christmas goodies and gifts to take to Ilwaco with my daughter and me.  Christmas morning I was delighted to open a beautiful copy of The Prophet.  I have all of Gibran’s works including two copies of The Prophet and while I give away a lot of books, I don’t share Gibran.  This copy, instead of being illustrated with Gibran’s sepia drawings, is graced in color illustrations done in a Persian style.  While Gibran was Lebanese, these illustrations evoke more of that part of the world and probably caught Nadir’s eye because he is half Persian himself.  This will be a treasure of the rest of my life not only because it is beautiful, but because it was unexpected and from a most beloved son.

This Christmas has been totally different from Christmases of the past, but Santa found Amy—she was concerned that he might not—we’ve had Christmas company and lots of wonderful meals.  By this time next year Dave’s sojourn in AZ will be over and he will be celebrating the holidays with us and we all look forward to that.

Christmas Miracle

 

I had a Christmas miracle on Christmas Eve.  I was cooking Christmas Eve dinner at my ninety-year-old mother’s apartment when there was a knock on the door.  When I opened it there stood an angel, but at first I didn’t know it was one.  He was dressed like a Long Beach police officer and he asked if I owned The Bath House there in Ilwaco.  I confirmed that and he told me that he thought we’d had a break-in because the door at the front of the building was torn off and laying in the yard.  I chuckled and said that I’d been unable to lock the barn for months and that to the best of my knowledge the storm on Dec. 15th had caught the door and torn it off the one-hundred and thirty-one year old building.

Now Officer Cutting, had tracked me down at my mother’s because he’d seen the door laying in the yard, talked to my neighbor and found out where my mother lived.  Someone else might have knocked on the door of our house, found no one home, logged what he’d done and gotten on with his shift.  This nice young man had taken the time to prop the door in the doorway and track me down.

I explained that my husband has been working out of state since June and that I’d not yet figured out what I was going to do about the door, but I assured him that there’d been no break-in.  “Do you have a screw driver in that barn?” he asked.  I told him there was, grabbed my keys and followed him the six blocks back to our place.  Officer Jeff Cutting proceeded to nail a piece of 2X4 to the inside of our elderly barn and then screw the hinges back to the barn.  Not only was the barn door back up, but it looked like I’d be able to lock it when I return to our year round home in Gig Harbor following New Years.  As Christmas Eve truly became eve I thanked Officer Cutting for the best Christmas gift I could have received and wished him a Merry Christmas.  He smiled and wished the same to me.  Then I texted my husband that we’d had a miracle and to call me ASAP.  When I finally got to speak with him and related the story he was as overwhelmed as I.  It is as frustrating for him as for me to have him 1,500 miles away when things go wrong. Officer Cutting parents must be very proud to have such a nice son.  We are very grateful to him and heartened that such young men are willing to serve the Long Beach and Ilwaco communities.

Weighing the Odds

Well, Dave left last Wed.  I had Ana take him as I doubt I would have even slowed down at departures.  I doubt I will ever get used to this commuter marriage thing.  It took a call to Group Health customer service to get his doctor’s release faxed to Lockheed and then signed off on by the flight surgeon.  He’d been trying for several days.  He never did get an MRI on his shoulder because the records for the ear surgery he had twenty years ago are in a warehouse in Tukwila along with the Lost Ark of the Covenant.  We did find out that Group Health will pay for physical therapy and acupuncture in AZ so hopefully he will get some relief for his shoulder and some rehab for his knee.

Last Friday I had my consultation with the Group Health ophthalmologist who specializes in treating occluded veins in the eye.  The treatment involves injections into the eye once a month for one to two years and has a 50/50 chance of helping and a one percent chance of hurting.  Left alone the eye might stay stable (as long as my blood pressure is stable) or it could get worse.  Swell.  Right now I am scheduled for the first treatment this Friday to which I am looking forward to like—well, a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  Ana is taking me and hold my hand.  I’m not impressed with the odds or the idea that I could devote a couple of years to getting my eye poked and be no better off than I am.  And then there is the question that nags me: if I get my eye poked with a needle does a voodoo doll somewhere feel it?

 

And I Don't Have Bette Davis Eyes

 

Right around the time that Dave was making his decision to go back to work which meant going 1,500 miles away from hearth and home, I had to schedule a doctor’s appointment in order to get my HBP medication renewed for another year.  The appointment was the day after Dave left.  Not surprisingly my blood pressure was through the roof; 157/97.  The doctor took it again a little later in the appointment—after I’d told her what was going on in my life.  It was down, but only to 140/80.  She also heard a heart murmur she said she hadn’t heard the year before and sent me for an EKG.  The doctor upped my medication which is an anti-anxiety medication and that made life more tolerable in more than one way.  When she got the results from the EKG she said that the damage dated back more than ten years.  Funny, how come no one ever mentioned it before?

It was the end of the school year and I wanted to take my daughter Amy and go to our home by the sea because I knew that I could deal with Dave’s absence there better than in Gig Harbor so I put off all the maintenance type medical appointments until later.  The last week of summer break I spent my days at Group Health Tacoma having an ultrasound of my heart, getting a physical, getting the girls pressed and having my eyes tested.  I don’t like to take time off from work for medical appointments 1.) because no one takes as good care of my student as I do and b.) because I try to save my sick leave for when my 90 year old mother gets sick.

Half of the results of those appointments went well.  Unfortunately the ultrasound confirmed that I have heart damage caused by HBP and possibly dating back to the ‘90s when I took ephedra in order to lose weight.  I am at risk of heart failure. When Dave left I'd felt like my heart would break, now I realized I'm in danger of just that. I’m taking my meds and eating more healthfully and I’ve lost ten pounds in three months.  At this rate I should reach my goal weight before I die—I hope.

The other bad news was that I have had some bleeding in my right eye.  My sight cannot be corrected in that eye.  In fact the glasses that I have, which are about ten years old, would probably be just fine if there wasn’t a twisted blood vessel that had caused the pooling of blood.  So tomorrow is another eye appointment at a different Group Health ophthalmologist in Federal Way to determine if the situation can be treated.  I am not looking forward to this, no pun intended.

Bette Davis was right when she said that getting old is not for sissies.

A Weekend of Mixed Emotions

 

Today is Labor Day and this weekend has always been bittersweet to me.  Unlike most parents, when my children were school age I loved having them at home during the lazy days of summer and was as sad as they to see summer vacation draw to a close.  Now I work for the schools and still am sorry.  On the other hand it means that my favorite season is around the corner.  Although the calendar and the moon say otherwise, Autumn is whispering her name in the foggy mornings.

 

Just as though I am a student myself I have to have back-to-school clothes as compensation to begin our ten month march back to Summer.  This summer I was busy with doctor appointments for my mother, myself, and my husband, not to mention Dave’s knee surgery, but I did manage to find a new jumper that will be snug this Fall and Winter and there’s always the tie-dyed blouse I bought for our class picnic last month which I did not get to attend in the long list of things that have gone by the boards since mine became a commuter marriage.

 

I had plenty of projects that have gone undone such as painting the porch furniture, getting that bird house put up and does anyone ever get all their summer reads read? The furniture will have to go back in the barn and the bird house wait.  The books can be read evenings and weekends when Mother Nature turns our attention inward.  Summer may be over, but there are still the delights of Autumn to look forward to and just now my attention is turned toward SeaTac because today the baby comes home for ten days!

Commuter Marriage After the Fall

 

My commuter-husband Dave returned from AZ on Sunday evening hobbling on a hiking stick that he'd purchased after his fall on Granite Mt near Prescott, AZ.  Monday we were able to get him into Group Health Tacoma to be seen by an orthopedist who scheduled surgery for today, Friday.  Because I had already scheduled a series of medical maintenance appointments we have made too many trips to that building this week.  I will be glad when this week is over, but unhappy that the last of my summer break from school has been such a whirlwind of activity, much of it not fun.

 

We will have to see how Dave does with the surgery to reattach his right quad and his fancy new brace to see how much fun is in store for us, although I admit to being very, very happy to have my “running partner” back with me.  Over the last two plus years we had grown used to being in each other’s company a great deal and his removal to AZ to work had been felt keenly by both of us.  It is not as though I live in an empty house, but it is not the same without Dave.

 

Dave’s mother’s 90^th birthday is coming up next week and her party is on Sunday.  Will a day be long enough to get him righted enough to attend?  I doubt it, but to miss celebrating his mom with his six brothers, five sisters-in-law and many nieces, nephews and his own grandchildren will be a great disappointment for both of us. We also have tickets to the Willie Nelson Show at the Puyallup Fair on the 7^th which could become the fourth event that we have been unable to attend this summer.

 

My youngest son is coming for a ten day visit beginning Monday.  It will be nice to have an extra pair of hands to help care for Dave when I return to work on Tuesday so the entire load does not fall on daughter-in-law Ana.  Thank goodness she is a stay-at-home/home-schooling-mom!  I am sure that grandson Gabriel will be vying for Uncle Nadir’s time and wanting to walk down the road to our woodsy park.

 

I will be glad when the surgery and this week are over and we can focus on getting Dave better.  That will be bittersweet because when he is righted up he will be returning to AZ, not to come home until February of next year. I am resolved to just have to wring the most out of each day right now.