Coffee Chat: Autumn Wanderings

We've finally had some autumn air here and I for one am thrilled.  106F in October?  Pfft!

Come in and have some coffee won't you?  I'm wandering around in my thoughts today.  Join me...

Shall we start with the computer?  I'm typing on a lovely new slim line laptop, an Acer Aspire and it's really nice.  I am so proud to have it and even happier because it represents a genuine love and caring that amazes me, as you all only know me from that side of the screen and I only know you from this side.  I cannot thank you enough, I truly can't.

Katie helped me research computers one afternoon after I'd gone completely dizzy reading stats and knowing just enough to know I knew nothing.  Katie is our tech geek and we often call upon her to help sort out some problem or other that has us stumped.  If there is new technology somehow Katie has already read all about it and knows just how things ought to work.  Add to that her love of checking reviews and finding the best price and just generally researching some purchase thoroughly, she was my first choice to ask for help.  Katie was here the day the computer arrived and helped set it up which took under a half hour.   After she set up my computer she instructed John and I about Google docs which we didn't even know existed.  I mean sometimes, we do truly seem to live under a rock somewhere.  

My favorite feature of all on the computer is that when you type, the keyboard is backlit.  I can't tell you how often with my older computer I found myself turning on the table lamp  if we had to pull the curtains to keep heat at bay, or a cloud passed over the house because I simply could not see the black keyboard against the black background of the computer case.  

This model had a higher average of positive reviews and the few negative ones made me wonder if people don't just feel compelled to say something negative if a review is requested.  One or two seemed legitimate problems, like damage in shipping or a connectivity issue that couldn't be solved,  but most were so obviously minor that I felt surely this person is just in the habit of complaining, or thinks only negative remarks may be considered constructive.  I shall just add to that my own very positive review of the computer.



 I felt a bit at loose ends without a computer to occupy myself in my quiet time.   I watched a good bit of television.  I started watching "The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel" again as well as "Downton Abby" from the beginning.  It's quite a shock to go from one to the other.  Aside from the language  with Mrs. M, Downton Abby is just...no word comes to mind except, refined.  Despite the negatives with Mrs. M, the story is well written and in watching it for my fourth time thru on season 1, I am catching more and more that the show is as much about the cultural revolution as it was about the personal revolution of Midge's world...and in the end, just so is Downton Abby about an inevitable revolution of culture.

While "The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel'' lacks the refinement of ''Downton Abby'', I do enjoy the program overall.  The costuming is soooo beautiful for one thing.  And the story has a certain poignancy to it.  My absolute favorite of all episodes is Season 2, Episode 2 in which the mother Rose escapes to Paris...I think I'd like to watch that little story within the story of Midge over and over again.  It speaks to me.  It just does.

I snickered mightily at Old Lady Grantham's remark to Matthew Crawley "Weekend?  What is a weekend ?"  I told John that I realized in that moment that people worked six days a week then, or in a household the size of the Grantham's, six and a half days per week and there was truly no concept of a 'weekend'.  The idea of anyone having two whole days off and calling it a weekend was a new concept.  They were on the cusp of their cultural change...


I also watched movies.  "The Bookshop" which I wrote about in my last post before the old computer (hereafter known as O.C.) died.  Then following suggestions from someone, can't remember who, I watched  "The Beautiful Fantastic" which was lovely and "Under the Eiffel Tower" which was predictable and fun at the same time and "Late Night" which I liked far better at the end than I had at the beginning.

And of course I watched some real life, too.    Sunsets and sunrises.   We've had the most awesome sunsets these last two weeks, enough to make you gasp out loud, while dawns come in pastel pink and blue and lavender.   One Wednesday evening, I'd settled in my chair to watch a live stream of our church service and glimpsed the most beautiful light peeping through the shade.  I hurried out to the back porch and sat and watched a brilliant sunset.  I told John I reckoned at that moment that watching what God had created was far more holy than watching a televised church service.  And certainly I got as much from it!  Not to say our services are boring because they are not, but sometimes it really is about the 'real' versus the talk about the real, isn't it?

And I've watched grandchildren a little here and there. Josh and Isaac one afternoon and then Josh one day by himself and Taylor on two weekends.  So the time began to fill itself without much notice of what I was missing on the computer but oh how I did long to write, or jot down a quote or share the movie titles!


And then I read.  I struggled hard with trying to read The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge.  Now I've read this book several times and know it to be a good one.  It's been just long enough since my last reading that I only vaguely recalled the story line, but do recall how moved I've been by the book in past readings.  I was attempting following along with the book club on Instagram but somehow I could never get into the story.

 I pulled out the November vintage magazines a little earlier than usual and the very first one had some simple line about old broken marble tabletops being used for pastry in a kitchen, and just like that I was walking about in a book memory of a Grace Livingston Hill novel,  Recreations , in which the lead character is doing over her kitchen on a budget and used broken marble tabletops as shelves and such.  I felt such a deep longing to 'go visit' which is the only way I can describe my thinking.  I wanted to go be part of that story for awhile, so I set aside the Goudge book and took up the Hill book and read the entire thing in two days.  And here I'd been struggling along with the other book for nearly three weeks!

Now I know full well, in another time I'll take up that former book all over again and swallow it whole just as I did Mrs. Hill's book.  Timing is everything with books, just as it is in all else in this world.  And I guess I needed this book at this time, as it was a true escape for me.  I needed to go dwell somewhere else for a bit, besides chasing around the never ending thoughts in my own head.


For all that I sound as though I had nothing to do with my  time,truth told, I have been so busy that I fall into my chair  at the end of the day and long for bed.  The time I filled was the interval between supper and a decent bedtime.   Lately,  I am on the road for days on end, often five or six days in a row,  before I catch a break and then I'm busy giving my house a good going over to bring it back to  decently clean and organized.  I am keeping the bare essentials done for the most part, but only I am aware that the kitchen cabinets now look as dingy as they did four months ago when I cleaned them last and that the kitchen counter had it's first really thorough wipe down in weeks this past Sunday afternoon.   There is no gardening done nor painting or extra project work.   It is all about doing the next necessary thing and letting the rest wait.

I look at it all and know that this season won't last and I'll be back to my usual tasks but in the meantime, I catch my breath where I can and work as much as I'm able.  I told John the other day, "I know now why God didn't think I needed that job that I was asked to apply for this past Spring.  He knew this season was coming upon me and I'd never have managed it at all."  While I will say, the extra money would have been awfully nice, I know too well that money won't pay for sanity and that's what I'd really need about now if I were balancing a job and life as it is at the moment!


Jobs...that brings us up to John's work.  He'd thought he would ease into retirement next summer, perhaps work part time and just keep going a bit longer at a slower pace.   That was his plan and it was questionable.  And then...And then his partner whom he is very close to, was injured on the job and then was asked to take temporary directorship of the service AGAIN while he recuperated.  I won't share all of poor partner's trials but his injury was misdiagnosed and he's a much longer recuperative period than first thought.   So there was that little upset.

And then one morning at work, another employee asked the rest of the staff how they felt about the ad the county had placed in the paper and no one knew what he was talking about.  It seems the county has decided to privatize the service and were taking bids from other private services to run the EMS, which essentially means that at any moment, these guys will not have jobs.  At present, all concerned are thinking they might  have a position until January 1.  Maybe.  And maybe  some of them will be asked to stay, likely at lesser pay.   Some of them were refugees so to speak from more distant counties where a private service had taken over and they are not in the least interested in being with a private service again, so they have already tendered resignations and found new jobs.

John was discussing another employee's plans with me yesterday and remarked that he had no plan...and I reminded him that he does have a plan, it's just been fast forwarded.  He will retire.  He will find part time work, perhaps in the EMS field and perhaps not.  He has options because he is the age to retire and we are debt free.

I'll have to say that my own mind is at ease about this.  I am confident we will manage fine, just as I am confident that this particular season of financial stress and strain really is preparing us for what is to come.  But John...

John's of three or four minds about retirement.  And my sympathy about his grief over the current state of his EMS service is about nil.  You see I've been through more shift changes, more 'Sorry no raise this year', more stuff ( the worst smelling sort), more years of doing without holidays and birthdays and changing vacation times after reservations and plans were made,  and things I've never mentioned like a bed bug infestation and no plumbing and no basic heat or air and other horrors you can't even begin to imagine, and really bad partners and poor equipment and more foolishness overall, and then the dangers which no one ever mentions but are there with every single shift, until I am just sick of it every bit.   And aside from all that, is the horror of the work he does, those cases that are tragic and traumatic and too horrible to forget.  Those things stick with him.  Some days just riding down to pick up his check is like a horror story told over and over again.   Every other house we pass there was death or serious illness or tragedy.  I commented to him once that I didn't see how he could even bear to ride the roadways in that county.  That's my take on it all.

But John...John has loved being a paramedic.  He loves that he gets to make a difference in lives.  He has a loyalty to that old county where he lived for 20 years prior to our moving here and has worked in for 22 more since we moved.  John forms attachments to peoples and places that I don't always form and he is loyal to the worst of them long after I have shut the door and bolted the lock and walked away.

He's also a man who very much assumes his responsibility.  It is his job to take care of me and our household financially.   He also knows that when that county is privatized, the level of care people will receive will be less.  That bothers him a great deal.  He has never quit a job but once and that was to leave hospital maintenance to become a full time EMS employee.  Retiring sounds like 'quitting' in his mind.

And so one night a couple of weeks ago, after he'd spent three or four days mooning about, he told me he felt all these things.  And then he said "I wanted to go out when I was ready..."  and I sort of snorted because John doesn't let go of anything easily except grudges.   I said to him, "Let's look at this from another point of view..." and I ticked off the reasons why working with the county made his job beyond difficult.  I also told him "You are a healthy,  vital man.  You don't look to be your age and you are still physically strong.  You are very much a young man yet.  You can work a full time job if you want to do so.  And until that job opens up, you can be assured that you have an income that we can learn to manage upon."  He sighed a deep sigh of relief and said "Remind me of all this again, please?"  As if I'd let him forget it, lol!

But in a way I do understand John.  I do.  I recall when Katie was finishing up high school while I wasn't eager for her to be away from home and on her own, and was in no hurry for her to leave, I also was prepared for the last fledgling to leave the home nest.   I raised my children to be ready for adulthood, in as gentle a way as I could, because I'd seen those parents who'd crippled their children by sheltering and excusing and teaching them nothing to prepare them to live on their own.  I think that is the worst sort of parenting.  And so I'd taught my children that we work for a living and we face hard things and we take responsibility for our actions to prepare them for life on their own.

Yet, I have said before and will say again, when Katie married and moved away following her senior year, I was blindsided by my own grieving for what was over.  32 years I'd been parenting a child at that point and I knew it was coming to an end and I welcomed it on the one hand.  But what I had not anticipated was how much my own identity was tied into that role of mothering.   I was not prepared for my 'family' to essentially be just John and I.  I was ready for the next stage of life, but I had not clue what that next stage was meant to be.  So I floundered.  I was lost for a good few months.  I grieved in every sense of the word.

And I expect John will be the same.  This has been a long stage of his life.  It's been a career that he didn't pursue until he was 40 and now it's ending.  He knew it was getting time for it to end, he's tentatively prepared for it but he's really not ready.  And I want to tell him he can't be ready exactly.  He can know this stage is coming, he can even think he's prepared, but in the end, it's a new territory, one he hasn't chartered just yet and can't until he's free from the old one.

I shall end here.  It's late, as it usually is these days.  Blessings to each of you...