“When you know with every fiber of your being
that you’re doing the right thing,
don’t let anyone unravel you until you are left
threadbare and wrong.”

—- Sister Rain

 

We all spend time “between”: between jobs, relationships, meals, hair appointments, books, and the dreaded rock and a hard place, to name a few. These instances are at once before and after, so different from everything else in our life that is either one or the other. There is a guarantee of sorts when between, that the thing that is no more will come again, just in a different form. Grief can still exist over the loss, but there is a unique buffer that something will take its place, and the real possibility that the next version will be as good as or even better than the last.

We all should hold on to this knowledge when we find ourselves between, that the next book we read will take us on the literary ride of our life, that once we extricate ourself from the seemingly impossible spot we are in we will have learned and grown from the experience. That Mr. Right is down the road a bit and it’s for the best that we’ve parted ways with Mr. Right Now.

Between you and me, between is not a bad place to be.

 

“When the score is 27-1,
not in your favor,
there is plenty of time for introspection.”

— Sister Rain

 

This is what it looks like before the blog is written. White. Empty. Daunting. I usually don’t even log on until I am ready to put finger to keyboard because staring at a blank space waiting for my creativity to happen is depressing and frustrating, causing my head to fill with stress and doubt instead of ideas and inspiration.

Many days things fill in nicely. It takes work but it all seems natural and right. Other times, like today, it’s a major effort and the entire day is spent with a dark cloud of white hanging over my head. It’s very much like life which, ironically, is what this blog is about. A life made up of smooth, easy days as well as the rough and difficult ones.

We’re all filling a blank page every twenty-four hours. Do you find a good mix of long and short, funny and serious, special occasions and the mundane? Do you have nights when you go to bed with unfinished business taking over the cool spot on the pillow? Are you happy with the days you “post”?

Making something out of nothing is never easy. But every day we do. The quantity and quality will vary but we publish new work into the world constantly without even realizing it. But in those instances when the content doesn’t come, we have to make adjustments, don’t we, to get some new perspective so that the words and actions will come.

I hope we all sleep well tonight, having our pillows all to ourselves, our empty space for September 21st, 2018 now replaced with substance and some laughs. Everything else, whether in this blog or this life, is just filler.

 

What is it about the eyes of our feathered and furried friends? They seem to hold the secrets of the universe, old souls with wisdom we humans can’t begin to comprehend. Moments before this picture was taken, Piper was throwing his toys off the table then squawking until his mommy picked them up. I must have performed my trick (let’s not kid ourselves about who’s in charge) until Piper was done. The foot lifted, indicating I should extend my finger for him to step up onto, and we settled on the love seat for quiet time.

It is a rare occurrence that Piper is not on the move and still enough to be photographed, so I one-handedly started snapping away with my iPhone. And In this image I saw the eyes that I recognize in all creatures, not just those who have rescued us and experienced hard times leading up to their arrival at their Forever Home. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen another animal, looked in their eyes and saw Piper. They know something we don’t and have taken it on because humans could not handle it. Well, that’s the story I have created to explain why their eyes seem to carry so much and even the most compassionate of people’s do not.

Whatever is going on in Piper’s little head I hope the most prevalent knowledge is that he is loved and I will be his toy-picker-upper for all the days of his life. And when he wants a fingery perch between the play, he and his secrets are safe with me.

 

“The rain came. It came down hard.
I had no choice but to close the windows.”

—- Sister Rain

 

The new cast of Dancing with the Stars has been announced. Don’t know the difference between a paso doble and Viennese waltz? No problem. Stay with me anyway.

One of the contestants this season is Danelle Umstead, an alpine skier. I became familiar with Danelle when I was riveted to the Paralympics earlier this year; Danelle is visually impaired. Her husband, Rob, is her guide when she skies and my husband and I both agreed while watching them compete that I would be yelling at him the entire time if we were in their positions.

A viewer of every season of DWTS, I have wonderyed when this day would come. There have been two hearing impaired competitors and two amputees, if my memory is better than my sight, and I am excited to follow her through this experience.

However, I can already predict what will begin to happen, not on the ballroom but in my life. Friends and family, meaning well, will tell me about this woman because we both have compromised sight. And they will begin to think that her vision, or lack thereof, and mine are the same. It’s an honest mistake, made completely without malice, but it is difficult to be gracious when you feel as if the comparison is a measurement of her accomplishments versus my own. This perception, made not with my damaged optic nerves but the other damaged parts of my head, is as distorted as my sight. But none less real to me.

In the post, They Don’t Buy It, I talked about peoples’ reactions when I tell them I am legally blind. A recent addition to the responses has been the person relating to me that they know someone who has cataracts or just had LASIK surgery, or how they themselves “can’t see a thing” without their glasses. Like the influx of “Did you see the blind girl on Dancing with the Stars?”, I can see it coming from a mile away and it’s all born from a place of good, a desire to show an interest in me and to connect. My destination needs to match its origin; this is the dance I will be learning this season.

 

“It is through the kindness shown to us by others
that we can learn to be kind to ourself.”

—- Sister Rain

 

I had this dream on Saturday morning. I don’t blame you if you stop coming around after this. I’m thinking of avoiding this site myself!

**************************

I meet a friend’s girlfriend at our local library. At this point in the dream I can drive but it comes out later I’m visually impaired. What the?

We are at the library for awhile. It looks nothting like it does in real life, it’s as if we are in a bookstore in a mall (remember those?). I want to find a certain magazine so we go to that section of the library/store.

My husband shows up and so does Kevin Bacon. Kevin and I are start hanging around together and in the dream it’s common knowledge that he lives nearby. I say to him after a bit, “I could kiss you right now.” We both laugh and it’s very innocent. I ask him where he lives, again knowing it’s in the area. He starts being squirrelly about it. “What’s up?”, I ask, and he replies, “I remember what happened to John Kennedy Jr.” I have no idea what he’s referring to but I get the message: he doesn’t want to tell me where he lives. I walk away, mad as Willard in Footloose when he sees Rusty (vintage SJP) dancing with another guy. A few minutes later, I go back to where Kevin is sitting and I tell him, “You are NO John Kennedy Jr.”

A little later we all decide to leave the library and walk to our cars. Kevin’s wife, Kyra Sedgwick, is now with us and she invites my husband and I to dinner at their home one night. I inform her of what Kevin had said to me. They leave. There will be no meal at Chateau Bacon.

I say goodbye to our friend and my husband leaves, but not before informing me how old Kevin looks. I start searching for my car and now I’m visually impaired and can’t find it. I’m not even sure what car I’m looking for but I think my red 240SX which I sold in 2001. I cannot find it. I go inside the library to call my husband. My iPhone is in my purse in my car. I know in my head that the library won’t let you use their phones (which I don’t know in real life) and the payphone my mom used to always call me from to say hello when I was at work is no longer there. Besides, I have no money. The inside of the library is no longer a mall but looks completely different than it does in real life. I find a payphone inside and call our home number (which we never use) collect. I don’t call my husband’s cell because he never answers it. Although I’m calling my home, I know I’m actually calling my parents’ house. I’m hoping my mom answers instead of my father, who I don’t have a relationship with. Mom had been gone earlier in the dream when I was thinking about the payphone but now she’s alive. What the?

Our home phone rings and I pray it’s not my father that answers. A man I don’t recognize picks up and I keep asking if it‘s my father and the guy says he can be whoever I want him to be. I hang up.

Next I call my husband and he actually answers. I tell him what’s going on and he says he’s coming back. I find a table to sit at with a lady I babysat for when I was a teenager and another woman I don’t know. In real life, we see my first employer and her husband often at breakfast on Saturdays at a local restaurant. They both have volunteered at the library since I worked there in high school. I talk with them and it’s a bizarre conversation I can’t remember. I don’t know why I don’t ask one of them to help me although in real life my old neighbor is blind in one eye due to macular degeneration. I realize my husband should be back by now and go outside. There’s no sign of him and suddenly I realize I don’t know what he’s driving because we got rid of his car in real life and don’t have another car. But he should be here by now.

As I’m waking back into the library, I think I see my therapist and her family but we both pretend we don’t see each other. My vision is off and on throughout the whole dream. I also see one of the Real Housewives of New York City, Countess Luann de Lesseps, and her daughter. I stop to talk to them because in the dream Lou and I are apparently friends. The next thing I know, Lou comes to tell me she found my car. She’s hemming and hawing and says I have “Price Right” (as in a grocery store???) to thank. She still won’t spit it out and then finally reports that Price Right crushed my car. I ask how she found out what happened. She replies, “If it happens outside the library, the inside knows.”

Lou takes me to a parking spot and there is my 240SX in perfect condition, but the size of a brick. She picks it up and lifts the top off like it’s a box and inside is an old-style cell phone, big and pre-flip. I am completely panicked because now we don’t have any cars (what my husband is driving is a mystery) and my purse, iPhone, makeup and work bag were all in my car.

Lou says she will drive me home but we get lost in a nearby town and nothing looks familiar to me and she has no idea where we are. And then I wake up.

WHAT THE???

*************************

Kevin Bacon was right not to tell me where he lives.

 

I recently got together with an old colleague I had not seen in over fifteen years. She was aware of my vision loss as she’s in touch with a mutual friend. We had a great time catching up and at the end of the night, in her ultra-direct manner, she asked, “What do you miss the most?” My answer shocked me and a few weeks later I am still surprised; I could not think of even one thing to say.

Less than five minutes later, I spewed my list of what I can no longer do, starting with driving. But the fact that I had to think about it has left me with a bigger question: Why?

I should mention that tequila had been consumed. I was tired. A lot of ground had been covered and I came to find that I was not the only one who had had some very difficult years. The emotion and processing of that, as well as the frequent laughs, had left me exhausted. And yet it is inconceivable to me that I was not able to launch into the inventory of all that I have lost.

I have been working for months on a project that involves me telling my story using a different platform than this site, and while preparing this endeavor, I am revisiting my before and after everyday, all day, which makes my frozen response all the more perplexing. Could it be, like Elsa in the movie Frozen, I’ve let it go? It seems so unlikely, given the fact that my work forces me to constantly look back as much as ahead and at right now. But maybe time, and let’s not forget, therapy, have finally distanced the off-the-clock me from all that I miss.

If I could go back to that moment when she asked the question, my immediate reply would be, “You”. It has nothing to do with my sight but it would be true. It had been too long and we both have been through so much. Each of us has experienced great loss but we are still able to laugh, share and love. No license required.