Rememberence

Nedra Grey
April 8, 1920 - November 24, 2008

I will always love you, Grandma.

In Review, kind of a bad few weeks.

Benny, my very old Grandma's husband, and therefore my step-grandfather, went into the hospital on 6th of November. He had cancer, and the tumour had spread to his liver and he was bleeding internally. They did an endoscopic surgery in the 7th to stop the bleeding, and he died on the 8th of November.

Kelli called to tell me on the 9th of November that my mother had overdosed, either accidentally or purposefully, on prescription painkillers.

On the 10th of November the hospital said that it wasn't an overdose. On the 11th they said it was congestive heart failure. On the 13th she had an angiogram which,while showing normal blockage which was taken care of, was not enough to explain her symptoms. On the 14th she told me that they wouldn't come right out and say it, but that it was a stroke.

On the 16th Stephen's mum called to tell us that his abuela was back in the hospital. Daily updates left us still not sure what was going on, besides age. On the 20th Stephen received a 5 am text message from his mum saying that his abuela had died. He left last night to fly to Spain for an unknown period of time to spend time with his mum and go to the funeral.

I am sad for all the sadness in our families. While I am so glad, I am also just a tad jealous that Stephen is able to go and be with his family during this time. I didn't get to. I am a bit mopey because I do not do as well when he is gone. I don't sleep as well, I remember my disturbing dreams more, and I have a lot more nightmares. And I can't help but wonder if the old adage about death coming in threes will be true this time also. All this is added to by the fact that Stephen and I have no way of keeping in touch besides the telephone (he usually takes his laptop and we chat often, but there is no internet where he is) and we don't know when he will be home. I know he will come home, though.

So this weekend, while I do have a bit of work to do for school, Ashley and I are going to hang out. I stocked up on junk food yesterday, an almost unheard of treat coming from me. We ate pizza and cookies and talked. Tonight I am taking her out for dinner, and tomorrow, as sad as it makes me, I am taking her to get her hair cut. I hope that we get the whole house clean this weekend, a task that I haven't even touched in weeks since things have been so hectic with school and I have hardly been home. I'll feel better when it is all done, and we will benefit from having some intense time together.

These last few weeks I have really wanted to go home. Not to stay, but to visit. To mourn. To spend more time with my Grandma. To see my mother and Kelli and the girls and my daddy. To hold onto Tristan so tight and make him remember how much I love him. To make him feel it. And maybe so I can feel it too.

Blog, Beards, and Barak...

Blog

It used to be that my blog posts were interesting. I spoke of politics, and thoughtful insights, and other such things. I sounded young and vibrant and intelligent. I don't know if time has mellowed me or if I am just being too careful about not being offensive. But now, I think I might be boring to read.

Granted, this blog is not really the place for me to go all soap-boxy. However, if I had wanted to play it ultra-safe I wouldn't have made this blog public.

I am not really sure what I'm saying. Perhaps I think about being more risqué, but I worry about what family will think if I am too risqué. I think about stating my position and going all activist, but I can imagine how many people might get annoyed. Possibly this is not yet something that I have thought through enough to decide what I want to do.

Beards

The cold weather is upon us, and the dark of winter is here. (Even though technically it is not yet winter.) I can now say that there is a pattern: Stephen likes a beard when it gets cold. It is not yet as long as it was when he shaved it last year, but I am delighting in it.

I was pondering why it is that I like his beard so much. I know it is a little unusual: I haven't even met anyone that I can think of that enjoys the idea of their partner having facial hair. I know that partly it is a feeling safe thing. My daddy had a beard, and part of it is the feeling of being little and loving daddy. Part of it goes hand in hand with my idea of what an intelligent man looks like.

Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci.

Last but not least, a huge part of it goes hand in hand with my love of hippie culture. All hippie men, at least in my mind's eye, have beards, and I just find it extremely attractive. Yes, I suppose that means I have a 'thing' for hippie men. No, Stephen is not one. But he floats my boat when he rubs my cheek with his beard.

John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison.

Part of me doesn't like to admit that I have such levels of fascination and identification with hippie culture. It feels somewhat silly, in today's modern age. But I look at my life thus far and it seems pretty obvious that it has always been that way. My mother told me, when I was a teenager and borrowing my daddy's shirts because I liked them far better than I did girl clothes, that I was her polar opposite. She spent the 60's and early 70's resisting and fighting against everything that being a hippie stood for, while I spent the 80's and 90's trying desperately to be one.

(One of my absolute favourite shirts is one I stole from my daddy way back when. It is blue, long sleeves, with mother of pearl snaps at the wrists and a pocket on the chest. I call it my "70's National Geographic photographer" shirt. It looks just like you imagine. Google Image it, too. Someone is wearing one.)

Since being an adult I have struggled to try to find the commune of my dreams. Reading about The Farm in Tennessee made me desperately want to go and live there. I always had a house full of people, and living with Dar and George was pretty much a happy commune situation. Sometimes I miss so many people around.

Barak

This election has been quite an interesting one for me. I thought it best explained when I responded to a friend's blog.

Hear, hear, and Huzzah!

I find it particularly interesting that so many people that I personally know feel profoundly affected by not only the physical act of voting, but also the results of said election. I have no previous memories of people crying for sheer exhilaration and joy, but that is what I see and hear happening. And, truth be told, I am feeling it too. I don't think it is Obama per say, at least for me it is not, but more the possibility of coming out of what has been seen as a very dark time. The glimmer of light in the tunnel ahead effect, I suppose.

While I have always been proud to be an American, the last year of living in a foreign country and seeing what the world thinks of us has been quite an eye opener. We made a huge difference this election. It might even make it so Americans don't have to hide their heads when leaving the country.

What I am saying is that I'm right there with you, my friend.

While I chose not to use the blog as a place to push my own personal politics, I am going to say that I am really quite happy with who won the election. Stephen stayed up late the night of. He let me sleep until it got exciting, then woke me up. We cuddled in bed and watched until the BBC called the election for Obama.

The next day, Tristan asked me while I was on the phone with him who I voted for. When I told him, he told me that it was a good thing I voted the way I did, because if I hadn't he would have been angry with me. Silly boy.

Back into the Olden days.

So Stephen did something wonderful yesterday. I know: strange, that Stephen could do something other than pin me to the floor with a one minded fierce determination to tickle my feet no matter how loud I could scream, how hard I could hit, or how much I tried to wiggle my way free, right? No, this Saturday was different, this Saturday Stephen took me on an adventure. Poor Mom was busy studying away (and apparently getting kicked out) of the library, working on whatever it is the she needs to work on for University. Meanwhile, at nine-in-the-drizzling-morning, I was making my way to the train station with my backpack filled with card games, bottles of water, gummies for snacking on, a camera, and tons of batteries.

Have you figured out where I'm going with this? Stephen took me to be tourist-y. He took me to Leeds Castle. If you have never been or heard of Leeds Castle, then I feel very, very sorry for you! It was wonderful!! The grounds were huge with tons of trees and green grass, lots of lakes and streams: this castle had everything! It had a Maze, an Aviary, a kid's park, and a kid's maze. It had land trains to get you from place to place, and most importantly, It Had Ducks! I'm not talking like a dozen ducks. Oh no, I'm talking TONS of ducks! Ducks with black swans, white swans, geese, moorhens, and coots; and it was just Ashley Heaven!

Here's the hitch, it was raining.

Not nice drizzling rain like it was doing in Canterbury, no-sir-ee-bob! It was POURING! Throughout the whole day I had to suffer and fight because my camera lens kept getting wet; so I have lots of blurry wet spots in my photos. It was amazing how wet it truly was. It just drenched us from head to toe. Especially toe. My shoes happen to be coming apart (they need to be re-glued) so any time I happened to walk into a puddle my feet got the full blast of the cold wet-ness. But it was such a lovely day! The castle was brilliant; we had to enter from the cellar and work our way up. We got to see bedrooms and dining rooms and the library. For anybody who doesn't know, Leeds Castle is built on two little islands in the middle of a lake, so to get from one part of the castle to the other you have to cross a bridge. Of course this bridge is covered so it wasn't draughty or anything, but the people who built it had a hard time dealing with straight lines. The windows were all perfectly straight, but the floor kept getting lower and lower. It was very curious, first you'd have the window come up to your elbow, then your shoulder, then your nose, then the window was too high up for you to even see out of (even on tip-toes!), it was highly amusing.

The maze was terrific fun as well. Since it was raining the pathways were basically gigantic puddles. In certain areas you pretty much had to wade through (that's an exaggeration, but you get my point.) So for me there was a lot of frozen toes and sloshing around. Stephen and I ended up splitting up early on, trying to find the middle. Well, it seems I found every single dead end possible. Stephen and another guy kept running into each other in this maze, so they would tell each other which ways weren't the way to the middle and by elimination, they ended up finding the middle and directing the rest of us through the maze.

In order to get out of the maze (without having to go back through it) you had to go under it, where there was a nifty little grotto. The grotto was made to be spooky and ominous with flashing lights and menacing laughter. The walls and floors were made with seashells and rocks in very interesting and pretty designs. Add flashing color onto them and you've got pretty interesting works of art! It was very nice. And dry....