March is Better! Let me Eat Cake

First of all, there was cake involved. Homemade butter recipe cupcakes with mocha butter cream frosting. LOTS of cupcakes.

Yup. Not quite a pluot. But guilt-free when it's shared. I spent a great deal of February WITH PEOPLE, doing my PT four days a week, writing on my own, painting.

I completed two REALLY BAD paintings, except that I learned a whole lot doing them, so I've started a couple that I think I will enjoy.

One of my best friends had to spend three or four nights a week overnight here because of our foul weather. She works in human services and gets out at about 8:30 at night and would face a 45 minute commute. So she has stayed with me and, as many of you know, February is colossally hard for me--so she was a blessing!

So I shared cake with friends and some little kids.  And there has been a whole lot of laughter that began, oddly enough, the last week of the month.  I wrote a closure letter that I HAD to write for myself. And, oddly enough? It closed the unfinished business for me, whether or not the recipient reads it. It was the writing and the sending that mattered.

I write a lot about my childhood in here. And about loss. I do not write much about the family dysfunction of my early adulthood and perhaps one day I will, perhaps not. I will write about it publicly ONLY when I  have turned THAT into a positive in my life. Need some distance for that, but it was what crashed into my head this February.  When my relationship ended so abruptly in the Fall, I found myself saying, Of COURSE he left. Who would want a woman with all this baggage, with all these problems.

Only you know what?

I don't lay baggage on people in my relationships--not any  more than we all do. We are products of our WHOLE lives and cannot have lived without bringing our histories along. And I never did ask people to take care of me because of my back, because of my lung problems... So I found myself wondering why on earth I was going to this fall  back position.

Well. The memories came, and I wrote them all down and I wrote what I needed to put that somewhere to percolate without hurting me. HUGE work. But not public work. I never want this blog to be about venom or hate. EVER. That difficult entry about Jack? There will be another entry about him, about the goodness that was Jack, my protector... the beauty of being with him.  Regardless of the inordinate pain of my childhood and the abandonments that came later, I love four out of the five other members of my childhood family. And I've made my peace about brother Jim, to the point that, if he is still alive, I do not wish him bodily harm. I will leave him to God, Whatever God may be. It is enough to let him go. I have been given tremendous gifts from having had my parents, Jack and Jean Ellen. I would not be the best of who I am without those gifts. I want my memoir, or anything I write BECAUSE of that history to be more about what happens after the pain... how do we turn that all into gold.

I have a long way to go there, but I'm hoping to have plenty of time to keep working on it... and I love having a blog to try to write about it.

The tribute will come for Jack, as it did with my sister.  For now? As I vacillate between blogs, I will be remembering to stand tall again... to recognize that surviving nine back operations, even ten days in a Striker (sp?) bed without visitors, driving MYSELF to Boston for surgeries when my husband didn't want to take time off, going through six days a week of PT to learn how to walk--these are STRENGTHS, not weaknesses.
I took a break to learn some important lessons and to tend to the business of being able to stand up straight. I can't walk any further than I could a month ago, but I can walk that distance BETTER! My feet point forward and I can lift my legs properly. When I was married, when I had worked hard to be able to point my right foot forward and lift my leg straight from the hip and bend my knee, I was excited and came home from PT to show my husband.

He said, "So you want a medal for this?"

I looked at him and said, "You're damned straight I DO!" And I left the house and went for a drive to cool off.

Better to live alone just now and enjoy my friends. And I showed Martha what I could do and she clapped. And I baked cupcakes. We had veal marsala I COULD STAND LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE, broccoli with parmesan cheese, carrots with a light hone glaze, an entire bottle of wine, and CUPCAKES. We saved the frosting for last.

Hell, that's BETTER than a pluot!!  (We had a spinach omelet and fruit for breakfast, though. And laughed some more over coffee this morning.)

I was going to go to the pool this afternoon, but I wanted to do this kind of therapy instead. And start to write on my blog again.

To those of you who have remained my followers through this absence, THANK YOU. When I've been online and read, it's helped. I have my beautiful photograph on the wall where I see it every day and I am enjoying a wonderful book written by a new friend, and have been reading back issues of a magazine I'd never have discovered on my own. And a saying is STILL on my mirror to see every single day.

I am back. I am me. Still have to sell the house. Still trying to apply for disability. Still have absolutely no income. But you know what? It's MARCH.

Spring is coming. The days are longer.  And I can point my feet forward in more ways than one. I have missed your blogs and will start catching up on YOUR lives now!