Feature Works

Lee and I gathered more sticks for the jug on the table. They are somewhat red and are my only nod to Christmas decorating. Bit meager, right?

I just do not want to trigger a sadness of it being Christmas and not having his family here. Our son may arrive but it depends on Covid testing and there is no way I want Lee waiting in the driveway, so I keep that part quiet.

Today I ordered Lee another pair of sweat pants and a nice flannel shirt. He will stay warm. I ordered for myself some new make-up designed to make old ladies look like better looking old ladies. I will let you know if it works.

It is nice being here in the apartment writing. Thoughts come easier and words flow off the point of pen.

I can hear Lee outside with his leaf blower. His caregiver keeps him occupied and he so loves being outside picking up leaves. He now has at least eight buckets of leaves stored in the garage. He is keeping them for something. Sometimes things are a secret and he worries I might throw them over the bank. I did that last week but now it is important not to. He has one half of the garage to store those leaves since we gave his truck away to the folk school. He sweeps them up, puts them in buckets and then stacks the buckets up. He has such a sense of order now that I can attest was not there before.

And we now have this at his end of the table.

The care giver thought he needed something to do inside so I got out this box of very old blocks and put them in a bowl that he turned several years ago. Now they can sit and build and spell if the weather keeps him inside.

Some new writings for the tether book….

 

Two Hours

Two hours into sleep he is up,

ready to start the day.

Back in bed, he falls asleep.

Two hours later he is up again.

She yells, “No!”

He yells back.

They lay awake wondering how

to deal with that stranger

on the other side of the bed,

and drift off.

In the morning he has forgotten.

And she feels guilty.

 

And because things change…

 

Making Choices

 

A former friend says,

“You have become so nice,

so understanding, so considerate

and thoughtful in your new role

as carer for one with dementia.”

As if it was a choice.

My response….

“It is my job!”

And because she must have thought

I lacked those qualities before……….

 

I draw each day…now hats.

 

Now I am drawing

all our hats hanging around

waiting to be worn.

 

An Australian hat

one of two I bought for Lee

brown leather cowhide.

 

And I started stitching on the fox.

That is probably enough for today…

Time to pack up here at the apartment and head home.

Til later….

PS Our son tested negative for Covid so will be here Saturday. Lee will be so happy!

I like this near empty bowl. It held so many days of colorful leaves just a short while ago. Now look at it. Some leaves, a hunk of wood, some lichen and an old rusty drill bit. It is like a little short story of interesting characters that were left to keep each other company. I thought about giving them the toss but am not ready. Not yet.

More thought is going into doing the small book of dementia poems. I know how it would be illustrated….a tether line in soft graphite that the reader follows through the pages…sometimes it is slack, other times stretched thin. And broken, and tied back up, and full of knots and frayed…but it finds its way through the pages and past each poem.

I will resist making the book accordion style even though it lends itself to one continuous piece of rope. There will be more poems than what would be wieldy in that form.

And poetry is so vertical! It would have to be similar to the last poetry book I made, “Distance Matters”. That one worked well with all those woodcuts made to fit the format. It will be a dilemma because the words want to be vertical and the tether wants horizontal. There is no way to have the tether vertical without looking like it is hanging….not a connotation I want…that’s for sure.

And poetry stanzas don’t look right side by side. That is a bit like taking the Empire State Building and making it into two adjacent high rise apartment buildings.

Plus you can only have one poem per page. Some will fill the page, others won’t. I think the tether line needs to run along the bottom of every page…maybe the longer poem pages is where it gets stretched thin or breaks to let the words in.

Here are two shorter ones I wrote two days ago and today.

Going to Town

He is the passenger.

I have buckled him in,

turned up the heat,

and backed out of the garage.

We are going to town.

There are lots of curves

to go around.

He grabs an imaginary wheel

to help me steer.

Before long we both are making

squealing, screeching noises,

and arrive laughing

and safe at our destination.

 

The Well

I tie on another length of rope

and lower the bucket deeper

into our well of memories.

We wait for the splash

as it sinks in the darkness.

I hold on tight and count to three

before pulling it back to the surface.

Together we peer into the stillness.

He watches and waits

for me to tell him

what it is

and when it was.

 

Anyway, I will draw some images of the tether line to use when I get it all figured out. The main thing is to keep writing for now.

And speaking of drawing, here are the last two gloves. This morning I started on hats…fifteen more pages to go and I can move onto my new book without the haiku and maybe a bit of color.

I will be back….

I like this picture of inside reflected on outside. Dreary day here. So here is a poem I wrote two days ago when the weather was dingy.

Winter Sky

There are so many lovely shades of grey

that could have been chosen.

But when it is going to be a cold and dreary day

what does the sky do?

It picks the only grey that looks

like a dirty white sheet.

And keeps it waiting in the dark.

so that before that lovely pinkish grey 

can arrive with dawn,

this grey is dropped over the house,

the trees, the garden, and me.

 

I spend the day watching through the window

for holes in this old sheet.

There are none.

That is probably why it is used so often

November to March.

No amount of rain will clean it.

It smells like other dirty days.

The winter sky is always ready

to pull it back out of the hamper

to float down on my world,

tucking it tight under the horizon.

 

More gloves for the drawings a day.

Warm, lined black suede gloves

make it impossible to

pick up a quarter.

 

Putting on these gloves

is like wearing a pair of

little brown Muppets.

 

Prompt writings:

You are given a box of clothes from someone extremely close who dies suddenly. Write the scene sorting through the clothes.

Look at these things! It was not as though she had bad taste. She simply had no taste. Just something to put on her body and head out the door. So as not to have to consider what colors may go together, she kept to beige and olive green. They’d look military if it weren’t for the cut of the shirts and pants. Loose on her frame and always in motion. This is the first time I have seen these clothes still. They are so empty.

Write a conversation where no one is saying what they really mean. Contrast their body language with their verbal language.

She said, “Yes, dear” staring out the window. He nodded to her back while reading his paper. Both had agreed to something that neither cared about.

How does one know when one is truly comfortable with a new lover?

When one can yawn in the face of the other’s excitement.

 

I read this book recently. Out loud to Lee. I liked the dedication the author had toward helping to save these largest owls in the world in outback Russia with rough men, vodka, makeshift equipment and exhaustive adventures. He writes so easily about the hardships endured in the most inhospitable place. I would recommend it to those who are environmentalists, lovers of birds and very rugged individuals.

As soon as I finish the latest Cormoran Strike book (I am only a tenth of the way through) I will start on one of these.

All writers start with an idea and some degree of passion to tell a story.

I like writing. It usually takes days like the one I started out with in the Winter Sky poem. One like today…rain pouring down, someone else taking care of Lee who slips further away on dismal days when he can’t be outside.

I found this from my journal writings.

“Books! They are the perfect form. In making them I become the story teller, the illustrator and the architect of the book itself, putting everything in a closed form for the viewer to hold in his hands and slowly make it come to life.” Sandy Webster

When I show the images in my sketch book of the Responsibility Hands and write about Lee’s dementia often someone will ask if I am planning on writing a book.

My answer is “No”. I don’t get anything from other’s people’s experiences about living with dementia except the worry that now I have “that” to look forward to. So I avoid them. I couldn’t do that. My life is not theirs. I respect that. It is offensive to have to listen to others push their ideas of what it takes to get through. I wrote the following as part of a letter to a friend who found himself on a pedestal of handing out advice on keeping hope:

“I don’t think that anyone needs to be taught the hunger for hope. But there are many who know beyond any doubt that the hunger for it does not lead to its arrival. We are not talking about those who are privileged to have the option of choice, the ones who have the luxury of time to find themselves, but those who are already awake and face every day knowing that it will be one spent solely in pursuit of survival. I suspect I am too much the pragmatist to believe everyone has a chance and choice for hope and calmness in their life. Not all people are privileged to have the helping hands of others nor are they in a position to hear those voices sharing a truth that could not be further from their own.”

I don’t remember if he responded.

 

The closest I have ever come to doing something like explaining dementia is this artist book interpretation. A physical interpretation of dementia. Nowhere here is a cautionary tale. No running diary of living this life we share. Just a tactile thing of what it is like and how the missing pieces are saved up in a safe place of small glimpses.

But thinking about the writing I shared the other day, If You Noticed, an idea came to me. I could write a small, illustrated book of poetry that captures the reality of dementia through small observations.

And perhaps it would be titled, “…trust the tether line.”

Here are two:

 

He Doesn’t Remember

He doesn’t remember

anything before what happened

in the last few minutes.

And a few minutes from now

this time will have gone off

to where years of minutes

keep a gate open

behind a grey mist.

And only then can the light shine

on what is left behind ….

the work of making

our next few minutes matter.

 

Yesterday

Just yesterday

he could button his shirt.

I saw it!

His hands grasped

each side of the shirt

near the collar

and he felt his way down

to the first button and hole.

Body memory took over

and down the shirt he went.

All but the last one

because that part would be tucked in.

And after the shirt

was smoothed down

he hiked up his jeans

and worked that button into place.

Found the zipper

and pulled it up.

Then he grasped both ends

of his leather belt,

put one end through the buckle,

pulled tight and fitted

the prong through the hole.

He tucked what was left into

the loops of belt and jeans.

That was yesterday.

 

So back in a couple of days…