I Can See Clearly Now

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When I started this blog, I thought it would be easy to write something every day. My head was filled with ideas and I was enthusiastic, supported by the knowledge that this was something I could do. While I was writing or engaged in some other activity I was constantly thinking of topics I wanted to write about. Of course, I forgot to take into consideration what every adult person should know - "Expect the Unexpected". If your life takes the “normal” path, you do not grow old overnight. You don’t suddenly wake up one morning and find out that your hair has turned gray or your face has become an unrecognizable map of sags and wrinkles. It is a slow process. One day you notice a hair sprouting where it shouldn’t, a new age spot on your hand or a twinge or ache during a seemingly easy activity. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always follow a straight path. Not everyone lives to be 100 and while we are living another day something unexpected happens that knocks the wind out of us.

The last two months have been rocky for me. Not devastating, not life changing, but enough to make me take stock of my life and remember that fate may have other plans for us. Turning 60 was pretty uneventful. I didn’t go to bed one night and wake up the next morning and think, “Today I am one year older” because I wasn’t. I was one day older and nothing had changed except that I had to renew my driver’s license and I could get the senior discount at a local grocery store. It was the little things that I didn’t expect that momentarily took the wind out of my sails: the illness and death of Paws my 14 year old cat, the loss of two new Koi that we recently purchased (Jin and Clown), and most recently the death of d'Artagnan one of our three year old cats. However, the thing that had the most impact was the loss of one of my contact lenses.

Without my contacts I would probably be considered legally blind. My husband has told me several times that I would have walked off a cliff if I had been born during a time when glasses and contact lenses were non-existent. Several weeks ago, late in the afternoon on a Saturday, I dropped one of my contact lenses. This happens from time to time and my husband usually comes to the rescue and finds the missing lens. This time was different. I didn't hear the lens drop and it just vanished, never to be seen again. I wear mono-vision lenses; the left one is for reading and the right one is for seeing far away. The two lenses work together to enable me to read and see distances. I lost the right lens. I didn’t have a usable spare lens and my only pair of glasses are at least 40 years old. Without the contact lens I wasn't able to watch TV, clean, cook or work in the yard. I also wasn't able to read. I found an old pair of hard lenses that I hadn’t worn in at least ten years and used one as a temporary replacement until I could make an appointment with my eye doctor. The temporary lens irritated my eye, causing it to turn red and weep constantly, which in turn irritated the area surrounding my eye causing wrinkles to appear. By the time I went to the eye doctor on Monday afternoon, I felt like I had suddenly aged 10 years. I left the house without makeup not caring how I looked and dreading a future with impaired vision. The doctor fitted me with a temporary pair of soft lenses until my replacement lenses arrived, so I could see during the week I would be without my gas permeable lenses. I spent several frustrating days crying because the much larger lenses were impossible to get into my small aging eyes and impossible to get out because of the irritation caused by my crying.

Today I am almost back to normal. I can see things that are far away much better with my new contact lenses. I can read text on the TV and see items on grocery store shelves that were previously blurry with my old lenses. Unfortunately, the stronger new prescription has impacted my ability to read. Some days I can read the newspaper and books, while on other days the letters are twisted and blurred. And that is the point of this little story. Sometimes things happen that are life changing: an event, an accident, an occurrence that impacts the life we are living. If we are lucky, it is merely a temporary set-back, a wake-up call so we can appreciate what we have and recognize the fragility of life. For a moment I got of glimpse of what it is like to lose everything I had taken for granted.

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” ~Frederick Keonig
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Dreading the Decade

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Having your birthday coincide with a decade is convenient. It is easy to remember how old you without really thinking about it. Unfortunately, the significant birthdays that mark a passage of sorts have also been years of change and, more often than not, tragedy. My sole surviving grandparent died when I was 20. When I turned 30 I went through some sort of crisis/soul searching. I had been married eight years, was childless, and was stuck in a dead end job. It was that year I decided to go to law school and within a few months discovered I was pregnant with my first child. Forty was a year I would like to forget: my mother and my father-in-law died within six weeks of each other, my husband lost his job, and I was involved in an auto accident while driving my three children to piano lessons, totaling my Volvo station wagon. I don't remember my fiftieth birthday at all. There was no celebration. My only sibling, who hasn't spoken to me in years because she decided I was not part of her family, sent me a birthday card which I do remember throwing in the trash.

I did not look forward to 2010. Unfortunately, this 60th year of my life is staying true to the pattern. The year is only half-way through and my family has suffered two significant losses: two of our eight cats have died within a two month period. Paws, our 14.5 year old cat died in May. Last week Spot, one of our foster cats who never found a forever home, became ill. His death was unexpected and I am having a difficult time trying to understand why this had to happen. My son B is taking the loss even harder than me since Spot and his family have been his daily companions. I don't like being blind-sided, I don't like change, and I don't like the fact that many things in life are beyond our control.

TRIBUTE~ Last night my family buried our three year old cat d'Artagnan aka Spot/Clumpy. He had been at the vet’s office for almost a week undergoing treatment for a urinary tract infection/blockage. Yesterday he unexpectedly took a turn for the worse and died. We are devastated. This is the second loss our family has suffered in two months. Our 14 year old cat Paws left us in May. Spot is survived by his mother and five siblings who were going to be killed on a tobacco farm in rural Kentucky. R.I.P. Spot - Three short years were not enough ~ July 2007 - July 13, 2010

"Whole years of joy glide unperceived away, while sorrow counts the minutes as they pass." ~William Havard
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My Cousin Janet

Sibling Rivalry

Starting Over

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Several years ago my son, my husband, and I dug a pond in our backyard on the site of our no-longer-used trampoline. The circular area had no grass and was in an area that received sun for most of the day. The project was ongoing for several years. B started the excavation and chopped out old tree roots that crisscrossed the area. One summer my daughter C and her friends camped out by the site and my husband built a bonfire, which could have easily consumed our house, in the soon-to-be pond. Over a two to three year period the project progressed and eventually a round pond approximately 18 feet across and 3.5 feet deep at its lowest level with a waterfall and stream was created.

The first year we stocked the pond with a few fish. We purchased two 3 to 4 inch koi at a local pond store and named them Keiko and Hot Lips. We also purchased a few comets and shubunkins. Over the next few years the Koi grew, the comets and shubunkins reproduced, and we added more small koi that we purchased at The Pond Store and at the Louisville Koi and Goldfish Club's annual Koi show and fish auction. We were lucky. Our pond had few casualties and the fish were healthy. Unfortunately, we failed to heed the axiom "expect the unexpected". One hot summer day when the temperature reached 101 degrees and my husband was out of town, my son B forgot the hose in the pond. When our youngest dog came into the house with wet feet, my investigation led to the pond which had overflowed its banks. Fish were floating everywhere. In our panic we failed to recognize that it wasn't the heat that was killing the fish, but the chlorine from the newly added water. Over a 24 hour period we lost 11 of our 13 koi and over 100 comets and shubunkins. As my son B buried the fish in a mass grave in our garden, he measured Hot Lips who had grown to 22 inches.

For the next two years I lost interest in the pond. It was painful to look at the two koi and the few comets that had survived the holocaust. I no longer took joy in daily feedings and I had no desire to watch the fish which had previously enthralled me for hours. When I worked in the garden I missed hearing the smacking sound that one of the fish used to make as he ate algae. As time passed and the ache lessened, we slowly restocked the pond. This Memorial Day weekend we attended the koi show and purchased four small koi: Jin, Sun, Akage-ru and Migoto. The pond now has 14 Koi, including the two survivors Noname and Sashimi, one shubunkin and many comets. Although I feed the fish every day and spend time watching them as they glide in the tranquility of the pond, it will never have the same attraction for me. In the back of my mind I can't help thinking of all that we lost one hot summer day and all that are buried in my garden.

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next." ~Gilda Radner ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Papa's Birthday

Grave nights

We had a thunderstorm tonight. It was the kind of storm that would have sent Paws scurrying under the bed. Storms frightened her. Instead of being under the bed, Paws was in her grave which is near the entrance to my oriental garden. I try not to think about it. The wound caused by her loss is too new. I try to think about other things. When I worked in the yard today, the first day in more than a week that was hospitable to those seeking to be outside, I passed by her grave several times and left roses for her.

My garden is a cemetery. As we chose a location for Paws’ grave, my son B commented that we are running out of room. We have buried three dogs, four cats, two guinea pigs, a frog, and one hundred koi and comets in our yard. Our dog Windsor was the first pet we buried in the woodland garden. His death was unexpected. I couldn’t find him one morning and after searching the house I went outside and found him in the area near the fence appearing to be asleep. As we buried him and said some words over his grave, the bells at the nearby church began to ring as they do at six o’clock every evening. When we buried Cutty Sark, our Scottish Terrier, next to Windsor 10 days later we chose the same time. Every evening I would sit on the bench in the woodland garden , listen to the bells ring, and cry.

I wanted to bury Paws next to her brother Goliath, but the area is filled with roots. Paws is buried in good place. It gets sun in the morning and it’s cool during the heat of the day. A weeping cherry is next to the site and I will plant a hydrangea on top of where she sleeps forever.