Palookaville and tenterhooks

I'm trying to think of something to say but all I can do is wonder what I'm going to be doing this weekend and who I am or am not going to be doing it with.  I'm pathetic like that.  Lahooo-ser!

I don't know how I got this way.  I admire people who can be cold to other people and their plans.  Me, I am always concerned.

I used to live for letters from my friends, especially during the eight years I spent at home.  Every day I'd go to the mailbox.  There was no Internet then.  That's lucky for the Internet because I would have filled several hundred gigabytes with what I wrote.  An average letter from me would easily be 25 pages long.  My friends called something that short a "note."

They saved my letters.  When Kim left the east for California, she told me she had a large boxful.  She had long encouraged me to let her send them back so they could be published.  I should have, but in those days I could hardly see moments ahead, let alone the months of working and waiting to become published.  Then, afterwards, after Mom died, I was empty....

For people who are shut in to care for others for a long time... the world becomes a different place.  You find yourself in a survival mode that makes you seem so strange to outsiders.  Life was going on out beyond us.  Inside, life was a daily question.

I don't know what Kim did with those letters.  I said it was okay to dispose of them.  Geri kept some.  Rhett probably did, too.  The Jean that wrote them... well...  bits of her are still here.  I think of the old self again when I feel intense pain.  I feel lucky that as much as I can hurt, it is tempered by the illusion of time and the tricks of maturation.  Every day cut into me when I was 19.  At 39, the pangs in my heart are no longer heavy rocks but they still have power.

You never know when you meet someone how they will affect your life, or for how long.  That's the rub. I hate suspense! And I don't enjoy the gaps in communication.  Not at all.

I still see people who are together after many years who still love each other.  I remember one member of our library's Friends group working in our backroom and her husband came to inquire if she was ready to come home.  When she said no, his response was "Bananas!"  He wanted her.  More than 30 years and she was his life.

The two of them laughed at me because I laughed in response, but it was more due to their happiness than it was to his wit.

I feel a definite need not to rush anything now.

And I need to keep in mind there are always friends... and house pets.