Detached Feet
Transitions

Detached Feet

Walking through last week’s white fluff several inches deep (a foot deep in some places) to reach a feed trough, it occurred to me that I did not quite feel attached to my feet. It seemed they had a mind of their own, though luckily, they had a mind to stick with me and go where I was going.

At the time, I thought, “Out-of-body experience.” That isn’t quite the right description. It’s more of a detachment.

Shadows on snow drifts.

I found I didn’t mind it. I’m familiar with the feeling; it happens all the time. With vestibular migraine, my ear doesn’t quite connect to my brain in the right way. There’s also a nerve that connects from ear to knee. Thanks to my ear and that nerve, when I experience a trigger like sudden bright light or a moving crowd, my knees can buckle or my feet land akilter while walking.

So when I experienced that in the snow, it was a lot more fun than if I had had a migraine.

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Home

Memories of My Grandfather

Somehow, the memories I have of my grandfather right now are not my own.

He passed away September 19, the end of the summer, following my grandmother, who died at the beginning of the summer. The funeral was a few days later.

While my family spoke of their memories of him, I found that I only remembered those things because they said them. Oh! I thought when my dad read about Mighty Casey at the bat. I can hear him saying “No joy in Mudville” now.

I’d forgotten that! I pondered when my brother stood to say that Grandfather lost all hope for his team when they fell behind by a run in the fifth inning. “That’ll do it,” he’d say.

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All Toby, All the Time
Farm

All Toby, All the Time

It’s been two-and-a-half months since Toby, our black Labrador retriever, died. The house seems empty; “not enough fur to vacuum up,” as Jeff says. I especially noticed it when Jeff was at work during the day and there was no fuzzy companion lying next to my chair as I wrote or licking the bowl after I was finished with my ice cream.

Toby: A Portrait.

Toby was a black lab with gray–no, silver–on his paws and nose. His thick tail wagged frantically and his eyes brightened when his human walked in the door. At night, he would keep all the monsters away with his hoarse, baritone bark; if there were 100 dogs talking in a park, you’d easily be able to pick out Toby.

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A Master Artist
Home

A Master Artist

It was a bustling morning at the Art Gallery. Several people stopped in for the Photography Show. Children exclaimed over painted scenes of bridges they had traversed in the park. One woman purchased a magnet, and when the oversized Casio calculator displayed “1” three times when checking what 10% off $6 would be, I finally decided it was broken and used paper (for those who say this is easy math–this is true; but when I am faced with a cash register and a paying customer, my mind forgets everything I learned in fifth grade, and mental gymnastics to properly operate the cash register ensue).

In the relative quiet of the afternoon (the “oldies” radio station still plays), I am writing. They say bloggers aren’t supposed to pull attention toward how long it’s been since they last wrote something, but I’m going to break that rule for today.

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Layers
Character, Home, writing

Layers

There’s a lot more I can say on all of these things, and more will come. But for now, a couple of briefs:

Last week, Jeff and I celebrated our first anniversary. This week, the nightmarish calving season ended with another nightmare as a cow I was given for Christmas lost her calf and twisted her hip after the difficult birth; our dog, Toby, was put to sleep Wednesday night; and my grandmother is in hospice care at home.

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“Life comes in such layers of grief, joy, and mundane.”

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