Friday, March 30, 2007
March Madness Dare complete!
Yahoo! 1,633 words for today which makes a grand total of 7,668. Aced the dare and went over by 668 words. An excellent start to my writing season. I'm going to try to see how many weekdays I can keep doing 1,000 words in a row. The end plots are just starting, so there should be exciting writing ahead. I'm out of the dreaded "middle" and into the finale.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Good day
Got 1,268 words for the day, which puts me on track. Only need 1,000 words tomorrow to complete the challenge. It gets easier every day that I apply my butt to the seat at the same time for my imagination to trigger and say "Okay, here we are! Lets do some writing." That's always been the key - go to my office at the same time every day and sit until the writing comes out. If I skip days or weeks, the whole process has to start over again and my unconciousness has to be retrained. I'm glad I've gotten going early this year - at this rate I'll be done with this novel by June and starting again on one of the five other unfinished novels. 10:30- 3:30 or 11:30 - 4:30 seems to be my flexible office hours with a short break for lunch.
Also worked for three hours halving my garden space, moving logs and shoveling dirt out of the raised beds. I think I can keep the deer away from a smaller section of garden and I don't want to have to weed the rest, so I'm turning it back to grass. Or maybe I'll do a wildflower garden there, wouldn't that be pretty? I love spring, so many possibilities!
Also worked for three hours halving my garden space, moving logs and shoveling dirt out of the raised beds. I think I can keep the deer away from a smaller section of garden and I don't want to have to weed the rest, so I'm turning it back to grass. Or maybe I'll do a wildflower garden there, wouldn't that be pretty? I love spring, so many possibilities!
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Giving up for the day
Successful application of seat of pants to chair: 1,658 words today. And I created a funky thwarted love connection between my MC's best friend and the main villain. Could lead to interesting things in the second or third book of the series. No word on when Kadar will come out of his coma, though. Got to get Sulis over there to wake him.
Pretty good start to the beginning of my 37th year of life.
Pretty good start to the beginning of my 37th year of life.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Word count
1,218 for the day. My mc has safely made it back to the dormitories and created enemies along the way. Excellent... Smithers, release the hounds.
Really sucky emotional start to the day. First relived Grandpa's death at the hospice in the dream. Then that whole thing morphed to a dream about my remaining Grandma, where a hospice nurse was in her apartment telling her and the rest of us that she only had a couple of hours to live, because her heart was failing her. Way too real, considering how poorly she has been doing recently. Actually woke up with tears on my face - I've never physically cried in a dream before. Took most of the day to get me out of that funk. But the gorgeous weather helped. Gives me hope for a good Spring this year.
Really sucky emotional start to the day. First relived Grandpa's death at the hospice in the dream. Then that whole thing morphed to a dream about my remaining Grandma, where a hospice nurse was in her apartment telling her and the rest of us that she only had a couple of hours to live, because her heart was failing her. Way too real, considering how poorly she has been doing recently. Actually woke up with tears on my face - I've never physically cried in a dream before. Took most of the day to get me out of that funk. But the gorgeous weather helped. Gives me hope for a good Spring this year.
Monday, March 26, 2007
goal accomplished
1,548 for the day. Got my main character out of the healing hall and into hot water - then stopped in the middle of the confrontation so I have something interesting to start with tomorrow.
I adore Anne Lamott. Quote of the day:
Also from Bird by Bird:
All right: on to my "shitty first draft." See you in a few hours (or days, if the writing is really not flowing!).
"I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each steppping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking will do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it." Bird by Bird, "Perfectionism"``
Also from Bird by Bird:
One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do - you can either type or kill yourself."...Now, Murial Spark is said to have felt she was taking diction from God every morning - sitting there, one supposes, pugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.
All right: on to my "shitty first draft." See you in a few hours (or days, if the writing is really not flowing!).
Sunday, March 25, 2007
I got back into my novel one day, feeling I had lots of energy and the project seemed leading to an excellent point with a lively conclusion. Then that enthusiasm went away and in its place is this reluctant exhaustion. I feel that so much is wrong, yet everything is right. I feel like everything is hopeless, yet the spring is bright. What is this curtain of immobility that drags me to the chair as though I have beans in my butt like those faddish stuffed toys, so that I waste my life in others imaginings. I did not used to feel my reading was a sucking mudhole. I used to feel creative and alive and I have no true reason to feel differently now, except that I feel middle age creeping onto my body and deadening my curiosity.
Is this a symptom of age? Even as I am only 36, my passions are tempered. I often feel outraged, yet somehow act on that outrage seldom. I am more sensitive to being bothered, to having to move outside my settled sphere and feel discomfort than I had in my college days. I have too long lived in fear of my own shadow. A shadow that grows longer and darker with every passing winter. It engulfs me in the winter but is is never gone in the summer, so that each month passes either in my shadow or running from my shadow, denying that it has ever been a part of me. I need to live in the sun, I need to accept the shadow as my own reflection but not allowing that reflection to cause fear. Where did I find that courage in my twenties? Where did I find that relentless fierceness saw depression as a challenge to be read on , to be hunted out. Is there still in me that girl who enthusiastically embraced change, change of mind, of self of perception.
I drastically need a change of perception - how I perceive myself, my ambitions, my life. I am in a rut, a muddy sucking rut that drags me back into its center as I pull the opposite direction. I need to pull back, to drag my lens back to see that the rutted trail goes through a wooded glen, that there are cobwebs over my caravan because we no longer move, and that there is a pathway that perhaps does not need a wagon that could become mired. I need change. I need to embrace the strangeness of the world, to stop the sarcasm and the curled lip approach I have to wonder. I have not wanted to be mocked, to seem as a fantasy-filled person. I have wanted to be a person to be taken seriously. I have stopped looking for wonder and magic because I want my views to be taken seriously by the mainstream - yet the mainstream will not value my views or beliefs no matter how rationally I state them so why am I allowing my bliss to be cruelly chained and left in the cold dark? I have been denying that I feel. Partially because there is so much pain in feeling. Anger and scorn have become my primary feelings and there is no room for wonder in such cold supremacy.
I have allowed myself to become a victim of cold, hard facts. My house is something that needs painted and cleaned. My woods and grounds are something that need mowed and cleared. The tennis court is where I play tennis, and I must do that well and adult-like. Books are what I read to pretend, and an adult should not admit to reading fantasy or to playing out other scenarios in their mind. My mind should be given over only to politics and other serious, important matters like bill paying, scheduling, planning. I don't think it is so much growing up as it is giving in to peer pressure. Becoming so self-absorbed - as in so sucked into the mediocrities that make up everyday life that they become the root of thought, the root of feeling and life. But in sweating the tiny details to perfection, the glorious wonder of life is lost. How can I become so absorbed in those leaves of grass and their length that I don't notice how they feel, how lovely the slope of the hill? How can I become so fixed with irritation on what I should do to the woods that I don't see the hidden ways, the gnomish mossy hollow log, the beguiling gurggle of the creek. The imagination could carry me through the hard tasks, yet I don't allow myself to meander the paths of the inner fantasy because as I grow older and more staid I become frightened of the insane and ashamed of unconventionality. Our community is very conventional - and in small ways suppresses me with scorn and mockery. Yet I could fight that with spirit if I understood and could make measure of how important the unknown and fanciful wonder was to the health of my soul. It is one thing to say "I am important" and try to justify that and make up reasons you should have self-esteem. It is a far better thing to say "this is what makes my life important, this is the heart of me" and let what really causes me wonder, sustains me.
Is this a symptom of age? Even as I am only 36, my passions are tempered. I often feel outraged, yet somehow act on that outrage seldom. I am more sensitive to being bothered, to having to move outside my settled sphere and feel discomfort than I had in my college days. I have too long lived in fear of my own shadow. A shadow that grows longer and darker with every passing winter. It engulfs me in the winter but is is never gone in the summer, so that each month passes either in my shadow or running from my shadow, denying that it has ever been a part of me. I need to live in the sun, I need to accept the shadow as my own reflection but not allowing that reflection to cause fear. Where did I find that courage in my twenties? Where did I find that relentless fierceness saw depression as a challenge to be read on , to be hunted out. Is there still in me that girl who enthusiastically embraced change, change of mind, of self of perception.
I drastically need a change of perception - how I perceive myself, my ambitions, my life. I am in a rut, a muddy sucking rut that drags me back into its center as I pull the opposite direction. I need to pull back, to drag my lens back to see that the rutted trail goes through a wooded glen, that there are cobwebs over my caravan because we no longer move, and that there is a pathway that perhaps does not need a wagon that could become mired. I need change. I need to embrace the strangeness of the world, to stop the sarcasm and the curled lip approach I have to wonder. I have not wanted to be mocked, to seem as a fantasy-filled person. I have wanted to be a person to be taken seriously. I have stopped looking for wonder and magic because I want my views to be taken seriously by the mainstream - yet the mainstream will not value my views or beliefs no matter how rationally I state them so why am I allowing my bliss to be cruelly chained and left in the cold dark? I have been denying that I feel. Partially because there is so much pain in feeling. Anger and scorn have become my primary feelings and there is no room for wonder in such cold supremacy.
I have allowed myself to become a victim of cold, hard facts. My house is something that needs painted and cleaned. My woods and grounds are something that need mowed and cleared. The tennis court is where I play tennis, and I must do that well and adult-like. Books are what I read to pretend, and an adult should not admit to reading fantasy or to playing out other scenarios in their mind. My mind should be given over only to politics and other serious, important matters like bill paying, scheduling, planning. I don't think it is so much growing up as it is giving in to peer pressure. Becoming so self-absorbed - as in so sucked into the mediocrities that make up everyday life that they become the root of thought, the root of feeling and life. But in sweating the tiny details to perfection, the glorious wonder of life is lost. How can I become so absorbed in those leaves of grass and their length that I don't notice how they feel, how lovely the slope of the hill? How can I become so fixed with irritation on what I should do to the woods that I don't see the hidden ways, the gnomish mossy hollow log, the beguiling gurggle of the creek. The imagination could carry me through the hard tasks, yet I don't allow myself to meander the paths of the inner fantasy because as I grow older and more staid I become frightened of the insane and ashamed of unconventionality. Our community is very conventional - and in small ways suppresses me with scorn and mockery. Yet I could fight that with spirit if I understood and could make measure of how important the unknown and fanciful wonder was to the health of my soul. It is one thing to say "I am important" and try to justify that and make up reasons you should have self-esteem. It is a far better thing to say "this is what makes my life important, this is the heart of me" and let what really causes me wonder, sustains me.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Rob Thomas - Now Comes The Night (studio)
Sometimes the littlest thing can set off a memory. I miss you Grandpa
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Restless
I am so restless right now I'm jumping out of my skin. Something's in the air - probably just spring but I've vibrating so much I can hardly stay in my seat. I want to go, somewhere, anywhere but where I am right now. I can't focus on anything. I was outside with the pooches and they were sniffing the air and I suddenly realized I was doing the same thing. I stared at the sky and sniffed and realized a half hour had passed and I had no idea what I was thinking or wanting - I was just in the moment trying to understand where I need to be. I don’t like this feeling. I can't focus on a book for more than fifteen minutes, desktop publishing for more than an hour. I'm pacing the house and when I'm not I'm sitting in a chair with a leg vibrating intensely. I feel like I'm in a permanent Benadryl dazed state - unfocused but intense. Scattered but waiting.
I'm turning 36 in a week. I can feel it. Thought I was born without the biological need to have offspring, but it seems to have been latent. I don’t like babies - nasty messy spitting-up vomiting helpless things that they are. When I think of being pregnant and giving birth and having to deal with the vomit and puke and grossness of those helpless creatures (and myself) I shudder and can't imagine anything worse, no, really, I can't. But there is that strange voice of biology that's crept up on me this spring that, after sex, whispers "are you sure you want to take that birth control pill?" That, when I had a mild stomach virus last week, whispered "Maybe you're pregnant; would it really be that bad a thing?"
I gotta say - the voice scares the piss out of me. It is a murky, primordial whisper that catches me off guard, that insinuates itself into my routine. My rational brain is saying "ick, NO!" and it's saying "c'mon, you know you want to, you'll never be whole unless you do." Biology is some scary stuff, man. It isn't often you have to tell your primordial self "Back the hell up!" but I seem to be doing it regularly. I hope I don't have to deal with this until menopause - that could be fifteen years or more.
I'm turning 36 in a week. I can feel it. Thought I was born without the biological need to have offspring, but it seems to have been latent. I don’t like babies - nasty messy spitting-up vomiting helpless things that they are. When I think of being pregnant and giving birth and having to deal with the vomit and puke and grossness of those helpless creatures (and myself) I shudder and can't imagine anything worse, no, really, I can't. But there is that strange voice of biology that's crept up on me this spring that, after sex, whispers "are you sure you want to take that birth control pill?" That, when I had a mild stomach virus last week, whispered "Maybe you're pregnant; would it really be that bad a thing?"
I gotta say - the voice scares the piss out of me. It is a murky, primordial whisper that catches me off guard, that insinuates itself into my routine. My rational brain is saying "ick, NO!" and it's saying "c'mon, you know you want to, you'll never be whole unless you do." Biology is some scary stuff, man. It isn't often you have to tell your primordial self "Back the hell up!" but I seem to be doing it regularly. I hope I don't have to deal with this until menopause - that could be fifteen years or more.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Spring!
Spring is here. It arrived yesterday with warmer weather, melting snow and lots of mud. Today a skinny groundhog scampered across our patio, oblivious to the fact that two large dogs were drooling at it from the windows above. Obviously the hibernation wiped its memory clean, as Aslan was the nemesis of this particular groundhog last year. Or perhaps it was the opposite, as the groundhog inspired fury in Aslan, his white ruff puffed up, while the groundhog was really ready to live and let live. There are still snow drifts melting by the side of the driveway, but the ground is beginning to soften and the dogs bring the mud in whenever they’ve taken a walk. After weeks of temperatures in the teens, 40-50 degree days are heavenly. And the longer days begin to lift the SAD that weighs me down from October through the winter months.
I like March. I know lots of people who despise it for the rainy cold days and the variable temperatures - but March is a moody month and I can certainly sympathize. March is the PMS of months - it can't decide if it wants to be warm or cold, if it wants to rain or snow, if it likes the pretty flowers or wants to sear them all to the ground with frost and freeze. It is full of snark and can be wonderful and kind to live with or just plain nasty to be around.
But at the same time, March gets things stirring. The Groundhog returns, and so does the red-winged blackbird. All the critters get horny - the male robins go to the top branches and loudly call "Hey baby, ain't I gorgeous? Don't ya want me bad? I'm much louder and bigger than that dude over there!" Skunks announce their odiferous presence for their mates and raccoons bring their lovers treats from our trashcan. Even the trees are screwing overhead without any thought of the sneezing audience below. The sleeting days alternate enough with sunny 60 degree days to tantalize us with thoughts of sweater-free wardrobes and blooming plants. May is my favorite month with green grass, new leaves and lilacs and lilly-of-the-valley blooming - but March has its pleasures also.
I like March. I know lots of people who despise it for the rainy cold days and the variable temperatures - but March is a moody month and I can certainly sympathize. March is the PMS of months - it can't decide if it wants to be warm or cold, if it wants to rain or snow, if it likes the pretty flowers or wants to sear them all to the ground with frost and freeze. It is full of snark and can be wonderful and kind to live with or just plain nasty to be around.
But at the same time, March gets things stirring. The Groundhog returns, and so does the red-winged blackbird. All the critters get horny - the male robins go to the top branches and loudly call "Hey baby, ain't I gorgeous? Don't ya want me bad? I'm much louder and bigger than that dude over there!" Skunks announce their odiferous presence for their mates and raccoons bring their lovers treats from our trashcan. Even the trees are screwing overhead without any thought of the sneezing audience below. The sleeting days alternate enough with sunny 60 degree days to tantalize us with thoughts of sweater-free wardrobes and blooming plants. May is my favorite month with green grass, new leaves and lilacs and lilly-of-the-valley blooming - but March has its pleasures also.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Just a little more time, please
After a rocky start to 2007, I'm catching up on posting. This is something I wrote just after my father-in-law died, January 27, 2007, when we were in Florida. Since then my friend lost her dog very suddenly and my Grandpa died. It is indeed a year of sweeping changes.
It is odd. I told a friend a week ago that there was something in the air and I could feel that massive changes were going to happen this year. Friday night my father-in-law had a heart attack and died. First heart attack, on cholesterol medication, went to bed, cried out and could not be revived. My mother-in-law is devastated and we are in Florida to try to sort out the pieces and see if we will now have another member of our household and if she will reside with us. I've been sitting in this deserted living room while everyone is still asleep, musing on a life left unfinished.
It is a very odd thing, this thing called death. His shoes are sitting beside his favorite chair. There is an empty coke glass on his coaster. His fingernail clippers are open. A package from a golf store lies on his desk, unopened - was it something he was looking forward to getting, when he ordered it a few days ago? He never will now and the pieces of his unfinished life clutter this suddenly quiet house. Everything in this house is arranged to his satisfaction. The chair, his chair, is the only one that faces the TV directly - and even though it does, none of us would ever think to sit there. Not even now.
We should get some time, it seems, to put things in order, to stop ordering stuff for our hobbies so that the people left behind don’t have to decide whether or not to open the package or send it back. It seems wrong, cruel somehow to clip your nails, drink the last of your coke before going into the bathroom to brush your teeth and gargle. Lay down in bed, just like any other night, thinking about the car appointment, or the billiards club meeting you are going to tomorrow. Then a crushing weight, and tomorrow never comes. An empty house and fading dreams and people who have gotten the shock that sometimes things change tremendously in just the space between a heartbeat and nothing.
It is odd. I told a friend a week ago that there was something in the air and I could feel that massive changes were going to happen this year. Friday night my father-in-law had a heart attack and died. First heart attack, on cholesterol medication, went to bed, cried out and could not be revived. My mother-in-law is devastated and we are in Florida to try to sort out the pieces and see if we will now have another member of our household and if she will reside with us. I've been sitting in this deserted living room while everyone is still asleep, musing on a life left unfinished.
It is a very odd thing, this thing called death. His shoes are sitting beside his favorite chair. There is an empty coke glass on his coaster. His fingernail clippers are open. A package from a golf store lies on his desk, unopened - was it something he was looking forward to getting, when he ordered it a few days ago? He never will now and the pieces of his unfinished life clutter this suddenly quiet house. Everything in this house is arranged to his satisfaction. The chair, his chair, is the only one that faces the TV directly - and even though it does, none of us would ever think to sit there. Not even now.
We should get some time, it seems, to put things in order, to stop ordering stuff for our hobbies so that the people left behind don’t have to decide whether or not to open the package or send it back. It seems wrong, cruel somehow to clip your nails, drink the last of your coke before going into the bathroom to brush your teeth and gargle. Lay down in bed, just like any other night, thinking about the car appointment, or the billiards club meeting you are going to tomorrow. Then a crushing weight, and tomorrow never comes. An empty house and fading dreams and people who have gotten the shock that sometimes things change tremendously in just the space between a heartbeat and nothing.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Grandpa's Eulogy
Images of Grandpa
I bit into one of your "sweet peppers" and sweat broke out on my forehead from the heat of that small bite. Yes I knew better, but still I couldn't resist your twinkling eyes, your full denial "What do you mean? Those peppers are sweet peppers." You loved slipping in a hot one, enjoyed the laughter as someone's face turned bright red, a sly smile on your face as you denied those peppers you’d canned were anything but sweet.
I can see you out in the garden, running your hands through soft soil, tying up huge, overloaded tomato plants, corn with full tassels bowing over, taller than your head. Every spring, no matter how long and dark the winter, you tilled the soft earth, planting onions, harvesting asparagus and squash and kale. As a kid the garden was a jungle towering overhead as we stepped carefully to avoid the precious edible plants. And even things we didn't consider edible were to you.
You stand beside the lake of my childhood, rumaging in an old styrofoam cooler, movements methodical - bait, cast, reel them in. You'd spend hours while I chased down crickets for you and I was horrified when you' d use frogs as live bait. You'd hoot and holler when you fought a catfish on the small tackle you used, but were also careful, because anything that could end up in the frying pan for dinner wasn't getting away. Every Friday night was fishing with Uncle Sonny on Mogador lake. The fishing would have good, if only, according to you, Sonny hadn’t reeled in all the good ones.
"Eat up girl, you're too thin," you'd say as you piled yet another helping on your plate at Thanksgiving. How could I eat up when I'd just been down in the basement "helping" you carve the turkey? You slipped me the best of the turkey whispering delightedly "Now don't tell your Grandma." We'd go upstairs and you would preside over the dinner table in your red flannel shirt, beaming with pleasure at the heaping platters and plates and urging everyone to eat as much as you did - though none of us could keep up.
Its Sunday afternoon, and we're all sitting in the living room visiting with you and Grandma - the football game is on the TV in the background. The telephone rings - just once and not again. "That Sonny-boy, " you'd say, shaking your head, "Just ringing to let me know he's beating me bad this week. I owe him a buck already and his team just scored again." This past week, I found the scorecard for this last year beside your favorite chair. You still own Uncle Sonny fifty-cents on this year, Grandpa. I wish you could come back to moan and groan and pay up.
"Oh I loved that woman," you cried, five years ago, seeing her picture after just having lost her. It was heartbreaking to see your devistation. Irene Bixler was your love, your life, your wife and soul-mate, and you never stopped missing or loving her.
So many images, 95 years of memories of which I only experienced the last third. I don't know about your years in CCC, though your pictures showed a handsome young man, his thick black hair greased to the side. I see pictures of you and Grandma, so young laying together in a park, before you served in WWII. I didn't know you as a father - but I watched you swinging my cousins up and around when they were little, laughing and hollering as they piled on you. And always through the years your soft, sentimental heart was present, reading me a story when I was small, admiring Grandma everytime she entered the room, telling me last Thanksgiving just how lucky you were to have such good kids, how you just didn't know you ever would have survived those last years without their love and their help.
This past fall you told my Mom you'd had a dream, that you'd seen Grandma in a vision. "Ma was there," you said. "I could hear her voice. I saw her and I walked towards her as she walked ahead of me, you know how fast she walked. But I couldn't catch up with her and she wouldn't wait. I guess that means it's not my time yet." You loved us all, but the one you loved most was waiting ahead and now you've finally caught up with her and are together again.
To my Grandpa, George Niemoeller Sr., who died February 23rd, 2:08 pm.
I bit into one of your "sweet peppers" and sweat broke out on my forehead from the heat of that small bite. Yes I knew better, but still I couldn't resist your twinkling eyes, your full denial "What do you mean? Those peppers are sweet peppers." You loved slipping in a hot one, enjoyed the laughter as someone's face turned bright red, a sly smile on your face as you denied those peppers you’d canned were anything but sweet.
I can see you out in the garden, running your hands through soft soil, tying up huge, overloaded tomato plants, corn with full tassels bowing over, taller than your head. Every spring, no matter how long and dark the winter, you tilled the soft earth, planting onions, harvesting asparagus and squash and kale. As a kid the garden was a jungle towering overhead as we stepped carefully to avoid the precious edible plants. And even things we didn't consider edible were to you.
You stand beside the lake of my childhood, rumaging in an old styrofoam cooler, movements methodical - bait, cast, reel them in. You'd spend hours while I chased down crickets for you and I was horrified when you' d use frogs as live bait. You'd hoot and holler when you fought a catfish on the small tackle you used, but were also careful, because anything that could end up in the frying pan for dinner wasn't getting away. Every Friday night was fishing with Uncle Sonny on Mogador lake. The fishing would have good, if only, according to you, Sonny hadn’t reeled in all the good ones.
"Eat up girl, you're too thin," you'd say as you piled yet another helping on your plate at Thanksgiving. How could I eat up when I'd just been down in the basement "helping" you carve the turkey? You slipped me the best of the turkey whispering delightedly "Now don't tell your Grandma." We'd go upstairs and you would preside over the dinner table in your red flannel shirt, beaming with pleasure at the heaping platters and plates and urging everyone to eat as much as you did - though none of us could keep up.
Its Sunday afternoon, and we're all sitting in the living room visiting with you and Grandma - the football game is on the TV in the background. The telephone rings - just once and not again. "That Sonny-boy, " you'd say, shaking your head, "Just ringing to let me know he's beating me bad this week. I owe him a buck already and his team just scored again." This past week, I found the scorecard for this last year beside your favorite chair. You still own Uncle Sonny fifty-cents on this year, Grandpa. I wish you could come back to moan and groan and pay up.
"Oh I loved that woman," you cried, five years ago, seeing her picture after just having lost her. It was heartbreaking to see your devistation. Irene Bixler was your love, your life, your wife and soul-mate, and you never stopped missing or loving her.
So many images, 95 years of memories of which I only experienced the last third. I don't know about your years in CCC, though your pictures showed a handsome young man, his thick black hair greased to the side. I see pictures of you and Grandma, so young laying together in a park, before you served in WWII. I didn't know you as a father - but I watched you swinging my cousins up and around when they were little, laughing and hollering as they piled on you. And always through the years your soft, sentimental heart was present, reading me a story when I was small, admiring Grandma everytime she entered the room, telling me last Thanksgiving just how lucky you were to have such good kids, how you just didn't know you ever would have survived those last years without their love and their help.
This past fall you told my Mom you'd had a dream, that you'd seen Grandma in a vision. "Ma was there," you said. "I could hear her voice. I saw her and I walked towards her as she walked ahead of me, you know how fast she walked. But I couldn't catch up with her and she wouldn't wait. I guess that means it's not my time yet." You loved us all, but the one you loved most was waiting ahead and now you've finally caught up with her and are together again.
To my Grandpa, George Niemoeller Sr., who died February 23rd, 2:08 pm.
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