Staying Vertical

This has taken me a couple of days to write. I had to let it cook down a while. I don’t know how others work, but sometimes an idea starts as one thing, or a whole bunch of things, and then it kind of simmers in my head until I can finally see some organization to the chaos and begin writing about it. This one has taken me a while. It started with a very sweet nomination for an award from a friend who has been in my life for more than 40 years. She’s a fellow writer, poet, blogger whom I met in the late 70s when both of us were cute little enlisted girls (I know, I know. Not politically correct. But we were cute, as well as smart and damn good at what we did).

Sherry went on to become an officer and, because our career fields were different, our paths only crossed now and then. Now, through the magic of the internet, we are able to have tea and catch up with each other, even if asynchronously. I’ll tell you more about that award that Sherry nominated me for in another post, but I have to start with awards and recognition and a whole lot of ambivalence I am having around those things the past couple of days.

Awards and recognition is the label the Air Force gave to all of the ways of rewarding and motivating airmen. The catalyst for my swirling feelings and emotions has to do with a room in our house that I am cleaning out so that we have a real guest room again. In the days around Bill’s death, my daughter and I had created a kind of military award shrine in that room. The last of the plaques we had moved around the world were up on the walls — just the most important ones, along with portraits in uniform and other memorabilia. We had weeded one or two out each time we moved — making a huge purge when we moved from Maryland to Colorado.

It’s a lot of stuff. We were both in for more than 20 years and we both did good work. In addition to the stuff on the walls, there are several dozen certificates accompanying the Air Medals, Commendations, awards for Meritorious Service, and letters of appreciation from commanders and their commanders, etc., etc. And then there are the trophies I can’t bear to part with just yet: Bill’s Father of the Year for 1984-1985 (the year I spent in Korea) and my Bravest Girl of the Year for 1961 (the year I was burned over 60% of my body).

I’m at a point in my life where I am wondering what to do with all this stuff? Do I keep it all? Do I store it and continue to haul it around with me? All of it represents some milestone, hard work, and was a pretty big deal at the time. For example, I received the John Levitow Honor Graduate Award at the NCO Academy and it is personally autographed on the back by John Levitow. I had the honor to meeting Mr. Levitow on three occasions. There are the plaques hand-made by CMSgt James B. Heath honoring my service at the Professional Military Education Center, and the one given to Bill upon his retirement. Where do these things go? I can’t imagine that my children want the responsibility for all this stuff. They have their own awards and honors.

Coincidently, I got a request from another old Air Force friend for some things like training certificates and military orders for specialized work that Bill had done in the Air Force. An exhibit dedicated to that work at the base where we met and married. Kind of sweet, huh? That takes care of a very small stack of paper.

But what to do with the rest of it? I don’t want to seem ungrateful or disrespectful. I’m just trying to be practical. Where do these things go when one stage of life has ended and another is beginning? Or when life has ended.

For now it is going into chests and boxes and onto closet shelves. It’s going to have to simmer a while longer.

I let the day get away from me again — full of everything but writing. I went to the firing range to fire a few rounds with my new shotgun and handgun. Then I field stripped and cleaned them. Yep. I’m a liberal with guns in the house, who knows how to load them, use them, and take them apart to clean them. Rush Limbaugh’s worst nightmare, and totally in favor of expanded background checks. It’s that “well-regulated” thingie, ya know?

Tomorrow I’ll be writing on awards and recognition. Thank you, Sherry, for giving me the topic and for nominating me for the Sunshine Award (more on that tomorrow)!

Today we spent the day moving furniture around and cleaning behind it and rearranging it again until we liked the way it looked. It inspired me to clean out some other corners and brighten them up. Some things to the trash, some to donate or give away, some moved to new locations in the house.

Spring cleaning is favorite metaphor of mine. It’s another chance to lighten the load of stuff I tend to drag along with me as I go through life.

Sweetpeas sending green
tendrils through winter’s dead leaves
promising summer.

I’d like to take you back to yesterday, and a chore that I volunteered for, that of pressuring washing the Bobcat tracks off the driveway. First of all, is it me, or is “Bobcat tracks” kind of cute? Maybe it just sounds cute in my head… with the other voices. (rat-ta-tat)

But the thing of it is, how could pressure washing the driveway and sidewalk on the first real Spring day in Colorado, with birds singing, flowers budding and wind-chime deeply toning, possibly be considered anything but a gift.

And then, today, I HAD to go out with my son in his little red Audi, with the top down, on another spectacular day. There were errands to run, but we took back roads so he could run through all six gears. The Meadowlarks are so eager to make new life you could hear them while going 50! One of the errands was to pick up a little MG he had stored until he found a buyer, and bring it home. This meant I got to drive the Audi the 10 miles home, over country roads, mostly — and facing the snow-capped Rockies most of the way — and got to take it through all six gears…

Every day, a gift. A gift everyday.

This has been a busy and beautiful day up here on the high plains. The temperature got above 60 (maybe even 70) and with blue skies and scudding clouds, perhaps “rain with thunder” tonight. Not quite a thunderstorm, but deceptively dangerous! Particularly if you are afraid of lightening — which I am. It is a fear born of close calls. I have no reason to court danger. At the first rumble, late this afternoon, I came indoors.

I mentioned busy? My son (whom I live with) took my truck early this morning to pick up a trailer and a Bobcat. He’s been looking at auctions again and found one where they were selling off some landscaping boulders. He bought us three big ones (each >1000 pounds) for about one third of what we would have paid for them. They don’t deliver when you buy something at auction. So he rented a Bobcat, which comes with a trailer (who knew?). He brought the trailer and the Bobcat home, unloaded the Bobcat…

At which point, one of my neighbors, an HOA Board member, drives by and stops, roles down her window and says, “A Bobcat? Really?” We share a laugh, and I tell her what is going on. In the meantime my son gets the Bobcat parked in our driveway. We always like to provide the neighborhood with a little something to talk about.

With the Bobcat unloaded, he and I got into the truck for the drive to Larkspur to get the boulders. And that’s when the left front tire on the trailer began squealing and smoking. We pulled over. My son contact the rental company. They asked questions and had him try a few things. We started off again. The first time he used the brakes, the wheel locked up again. We both knew we weren’t driving that trailer anywhere but back home, where he called the rental company again and they sent a replacement trailer out.

Thirty minutes later, we were on our way for a nice drive down to Larkspur on a beautiful day. Our boulders were set to the side, and the folks loaded them up and we secured them with the chains that had secured the Bobcat earlier. Then we headed home, stopping every little bit to check the chains and make sure they hadn’t gone slack. One of our boulders broke a bit on the trip and then broke into many bits when he tried to unload it. It had some fractures in it to begin with, and the bouncing down the road did it in.

We got all the pieces unloaded and the two remaining boulders. My son drove that Bobcat like he knew what he was doing! I had him put one near my sunset watching chair so I could have company if I wanted or set a drink on it if I don’t. Or both.

The other he struggled to stand on end for me, because that was the way I wanted it. It took many unsuccessful tries. Many. And we are propping it, for now, while it settles into place — but by golly he got it upright and facing the way I wanted it. Could a mother ask for more?

He grouped three of the bigger pieces off of the broken boulder near the end of the driveway, where delivery trucks like to run over my lawn. It will mean that I will have to be more careful, too!

We’ll use the rest of the broken pieces to extend our little rock wall around the garden to the fence and add some interest to the xeriscape on the side.

Then, while he got ready for an evening of Denver Center theater, I power-washed the Bobcat tracks off the driveway and sidewalk, before I took a few pictures of the results of all that hard work.
And then I just stood back and admired it all.

A down day. Washing, healing, resting. Snuggling with the dogs and cats. Writing ads for Craig’s List (anybody want some war movies? a 1976 Red Dale? how about an ambulance?).

A dear friend of mine, a particularly handsome gentleman barely in his 60s, confessed to me recently that he was quite vain. I didn’t argue with him, but I thought about it afterwards. I don’t see him as vain, just as someone who pays attention to his appearance. Perhaps a little fastidious, but he’s former Air Force and since I spent some time in public with him, I appreciate the effort! I didn’t catch him flirting with his reflection in windows, so I figure he’s really pretty normal — maybe just a little extra special.

At the same time, I assured myself that I had very little vanity about me. Beyond being clean and dressed in clean attractive clothing with hair combed, perhaps a little blush and mascara; I didn’t spend much time thinking about how I looked. And then came this past Saturday night.

I fell. It was just two steps, but it might has well have been six. I’m bruised and sore with a swollen and discolored left foot and a right knee that looks a lot like it. My right shoulder aches, my ribs are tender, and my pride is wounded. I’ve re-activated my walking cane.

I came to the realization, as I elevated my injured lower limbs, that it happened because I am vain. Instead of recognizing that the restaurant was poorly lighted, and that I was walking in unfamiliar territory, and instead of accommodating those realities by walking slowly and carefully and looking down to see where I was walking; I walked head erect and shoulders back and did a full horizontal dive in front of roomful of people.

I’m lucky I didn’t break anything. At least I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I assumed since I was able to get back up on my feet and walk (albeit with a limp) that no serious damage was done (however, at my son’s urging, I’m going to try to get in to see my doctor and get checked out in the next day or two).

It has, however, caused me to re-evaluate my vanity quotient. As I limped through airports today and elevated my black and blue elephant foot whenever I had a chance to sit, I was aching in deeper places than my muscles and joints. I can almost deal with no longer being the slender little cutie — almost — most of the people my age are in varying stages of decomposition, so I didn’t feel too badly about the shape I was in — until the shape I was in was so bad.

Getting older is not for sissies.