Holding the now

It is late, and I am in a funk. There's no good reason for it, except that my days have been broken up  with phone calls and boxes and coughing that lingers from the whooping cough episode. And of course, as H wrote, there are all these countdowns. Five days til our anniversary. Six days til our closing. Eight days til we move. And as I keep counting down, I am losing touch with what is. Now.

I have lived my life imagining that someday I would have a home. And yes, a husband. Some time or other, I decided that neither would happen. I have written about that before. And then H arrived in my life. And 359 days ago, he read some loving words to me in front of a group of gregarious friends, and Nelson said some important words, and we escaped a rain storm, and now, almost a year later, we are married.

We are married.
 
We have been looking to the anniversary, and looking to the move, and I think we -- maybe I -- have lost track of the now. The days have been filled with the "to do" list. And here's what that "to do" list looks like (thanks Emmett!)....

It is a record of my professional life, measured in papers I will never unpack. It is a record of meals made with friends, measured in an extra large soup pot and stainless steel bowls. It is a record of decades of turning fleece and fiber into fabric, and a decade of turning seeds into food, and a lifetime of turning stories into home.

But right now, Herb is sleeping (I hope), in the bedroom in MA by the fan. And I am sitting under the desk lamp in a room in VT that is nearly empty. The fan is on here as well.  It is supposed to be 20 degrees hotter tonight than it was during the day. I took two dressers from the bedroom and put them in the garage today. The only things left are the bed, a clothes tree that my mother rather dramatically calls a "costumer", a table and another small dresser at the top of the stairs. I also moved the bookcase to the garage, with the last of the three ring binders that hold my professional writing.  The office from which I write still holds some file cabinets, one more folding bookcase and a butcher block table, and the cardboard boxes that the cats like to sleep in.  But as the house is stripped of the books and papers, the dressers with clothes, the art, the rugs, the sounds I make seem to echo.

The day that Herb and I agreed with the sellers on a price, we spent several hours over lunch writing down what we wouldn't miss when we left here, and what we look forward to. Herb looks forward to being able to stand up straight when he gets out of bed without  hitting his head on the ceiling. I look forward to a towel rack in the bathroom rather than the plastic coated wire thing that hangs on the back of the bathroom door. We both look forward to drinking water from the tap, instead of hefting water bottles filled at a friend's spring-fed tap,to avoid the sulfur-infused water that characterizes the houses in this part of town.

But we didn't spend any time talking about what we will miss. And as I sit in the empty house, I realize that there are things that I need to record; things about the now that matter. Things about the now that will eventually be history. Our friend Emmet sent us a photo he took yesterday of our cat, Ed, at the slider door. This is a place that has brought our cats safety and joy. They have spent hours watching chipmunk ping pong; they have tasted grass and rolled in the gravel driveway, and contemplated (and once accomplished) escape to the neighbor's porch.

For something short of a decade, we have been a few yards from the post office and could see who was working and who was checking their mail, by walking to the front door. Sometimes, those who have been across the street at the post office, have stopped in to say hello. 

As one of our friends would say, we have had quiet neighbors, sited as we are, next door to the old cemetery.

The garden has been bountiful - tomatoes and basil for pesto, potatoes, corn, beans and peas, Mexican sunflowers and herbs, and a host of perennials gifted by our friends before the wedding. I will miss sitting in the midst of the corn stalks where no one knew I was there.

I will miss the robin's nest that has been rebuilt in the window of Mom's room for the second time. I have gotten to know these three babies quite well - from egg to near-fledging. I hope to see them go before we move.

I will miss the late night quiets, and the sound of the church bells on Sunday, and the black caps along the school road. I will miss the woodstove; mom wants me to leave a note for the next tenant to tell them how wonderful it is. I will miss the raspberries and the asparagus and the crocuses planted by someone before. H has said, that this house taught him once again, to hear the sound of rain on a metal roof.

My mother is struggling with the effects of her cancer. She is understandably seeking the life lessons that come with this. When we sit together, usually late at night, talking in the ways that mothers and daughters are supposed to at a time like this, I tell her to focus on the now. When she struggles with the physical immobility and the difficulties clearing her head, I tell her to focus on the people who surround her, who move heaven and earth to be with her, to make a meal, to watch tv or a movie, just to read while she sleeps. "Focus on the fact that you are at home. Look out the window at the sunrise and the sunset. Think about the fact that others are alone. Focus on the fact that you are surrounded by people who love you."  Easier said than done.

Before the wedding, H made a sign and hung it at the slider door. The sign read: "Nora's Happy Place."  And so it has been. It has not been an easy place; but today, five days from our anniversary, six days from being the owners of a historic house in a town we love, eight days from knowing what it is to stand up straight out of bed, and to take a towel from the rack, this is our now. And I am grateful--for this house and the man I married.