Sunday, 28 March 2010

• Resignation

   Today I finally hung things on my walls. Having spent forever spackling up old holes and painting everything a soothing sagey green color, I was reluctant to start poking new holes. But the cute cat print I picked up in Japan had been in my closet for months, the cool green man ceramic mask had become a space hogging fixture on my desk, and the one thing I had put up -- my calendar -- was plainly not getting much use at its current location above my light switch. All in all, I made three holes (and only dropped one thumbtack into the water of my hydroponic plant).  I still have a lot of bare space, so I'm thinking of getting this print by oil painter Michael Wood:

  Putting things up on my walls is always a sort of acknowledgment that I am staying in a place for a while. When I moved here last spring, I wasn't so much moving in as moving away from a home filled with unbearably painful memories of Naomi. I didn't know how long I was going to stay, and I didn't really care. I wasn't looking for a new home; I just needed a place away from my own brain.

  Of course I didn't fnd one. I don't know if things would have been worse if I had stayed. They certainly weren't good even away from all that. I'm wrapping up the most tumultuous and tear-filled year of my life (so far) this spring, and there were times when I just wasn't sure I'd make it. Kevin likes the saying, "Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." I disagree. Whatever doesn't kill you just doesn't kill you. You break, you mend, you limp for the rest of your life, and you deal with it as best you can.

  Hanging up pictures in my room today was a sort of goodbye. Naomi's not coming back. I'm not going home. That was one chunk of me that I'm never going to grow back, and yes, it does suck.

  But I'm slowly trying to see that Naomi's death has also given me the time and the desire to experience new things. Pottery class, cat shelter, Brie. A passion for trying to minimize the harm I do to the earth. The epiphany that most, if not all, people are also broken in some way and deserve my patience. Gratitude that Kevin stuck around while I quietly and (to most people) imperceptibly fell apart. It's not a bargain I would ever have chosen to make, but it's all I have. Mimi, it's been a hard year without you. 

  Brie, not to bore you with an overabundance of cat news, is doing well and has started to purr and roll over when I pet her. The odds are overwhelmingly good that I will be adopting her, unless someone else comes along who is even better qualified and more experienced with cats wants her. It's possible, but not likely. Even less likely the more Brie purrs and cuddles.

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