Back on the 13th of June, we were crossing Nebraska, and I was in the passenger seat, reading quietly. I looked down at my hand. It was palm-down on the book I was reading, on the page opposite to the one I was on. I looked at the sterling silver and turquoise rings on my fingers, and I saw my mother's hand. I saw the thin fingers, the narrow hand, the distinct knuckles and short cut nails that appear longer than they really are because of the long, even nail beds. I was suddenly quite painfully aware of my similarity to her, and of her absence from my life.

Looking so much like my mother now has a mixed meaning to me. It is a blessing and a curse.

It is a blessing because I am honored to look so much like such a beautiful, strong woman. Every time I look in the mirror, I am reminded of her, and that is truly a blessing.

It's also a curse because every time I look at my image in a mirror, I see her, and just as I am reminded of her, I am also reminded that she in no longer with me. Every time, even now after three years, I am also reminded of the the sharp pain of losing her.

So I look down at my hand today, and am reminded of the strong, creative, comforting hand of my mother. The hand that cared for me for so many years. The hand that could take a blob of clay dug from deep within the ground, and refine it, pulling the beauty from the muck, and make it into a piece of art.

I remember her mostly from my childhood, when she had her sight, and her strength. When she would spend her afternoons creating things out of clay, or making funky beads out of long strips of paper.

Her mornings belonged to the construction company where she worked for my dad. But her afternoons belonged to her creative spirit. She always wore an apron, whether to really protect her clothing, or merely out of habit, I can't be sure. Her aprons were all cut from same pattern - literally. She sewed all of them herself, and some were cut from some pretty eccentric fabrics.

She always carried a handkerchief in her apron pocket, also out of habit, I think. She could be wearing the oldest, most tattered apron, but she'd have a cute handkerchief with tatted or crocheted lace around the edge.

In retrospect, I think most of those were probably made by my grandmother or great-grandmother. I never realized it then, but I know now that my mother was a very sentimental person. She often had things around her from family members and friends. she had paintings on the walls and sculptures on the end tables that her children made years before, her heart still full of pride every time she looked at them.

That was something always obvious about my mother. she was very proud of her children, and very accepting of us. Sometimes I could tell she wondered about how her life might have been different if she'd made different choices, but I also could always tell she had no regrets. She'd never have considered trading any of us for something different, something easier than marrying a man she really barely knew after only a handful of dates, moving from the city to the strange loneliness of country life far away, raising six children...

But she would sometimes sound wistful when she talked about things like traveling, and about history and science and archaeology. She was fascinated by archaeology and history. Our house was filled with history. There was non-fiction books and magazines in every room. While other households had subscriptions to "Good Housekeeping" and "Vogue", we got "National Geographic", "Smithsonian" and "Scientific American".

Even now, as an adult out on my own, I lean toward non-fiction. It's fact. It's real. It's tangible. And you can't argue with it.

You'd think my mother's love for all things creative and for all things cut-and-dry would be in direct conflict. But she found perfect harmony between them. I suppose because even in creativity, there's a base of history, and of what's "real".

Now back to those rings that started me thinking. They were hers. She wore them the same way I do, and these particular rings she wore often. I'm so thankful to have them, to be able to have a little piece of her that I can have with me. I miss her.

This beginning of menopause stuff is really not fun.... 

 

#1 – The warm flashes are no big deal. The mega freaky super HOT flashes are flippin' scary as all get out.  I mean, really…. let's think about this.   I'm just sitting around doing nothing more or less than anyone else, and all of a sudden I'm so hot I start sweating.  Everyone else, of course, is still chilled and wearing hoodies while I'm literally dying and desperate to remove at least one layer of whatever I'm wearing.   A few minutes later, and I'm freezing again.   It's terribly unnerving.

 

#2 – The messed up stomach "stuff" is almost equally as freaky.  I'm kind of hungry, but I can't eat more than a few bites without feeling full, and moments later suffering from absurdly bad heartburn. --  what a wonder of nature!  Like this morning…  After a rocky evening of heartburn and feeling inexplicably bloated, I hadn't eaten anything for about 15 hours.  I was a little bit hungry, but at the same time, I still felt a little bit full.  So I had an apple, or at least part of one – I couldn't finish the whole thing.  Granted, a lot of people can NEVER finish a decent-sized apple.  I'm not one of those people.  I can almost always eat "the whole thing".  Until now.  Now I eat a container of yogurt and I'm stuffed beyond stuffed….  But only for about an hour and then I'm hungry again, most certainly because I'm not really getting much at one time. 

 

#3 – The mood swings are ridiculous.  I can be in a GREAT mood, and suddenly, something will set me off, and I'll be so upset about something that it's almost unbelievable.  And the weird things is that half way into being upset,  I realize I'm being unreasonable, but I can't stop it.   And the crying is annoying.  I've always been "a cryer", but now it's just silly.  Sometimes, I cry at the drop of a hat, and I don't just mean that I tear up…. Nope.  I sob.  It's making me want to sob right now over the silliness of it.

 

#4 – The irritability is irritating!  Not to be confused with the mood swings that hit without warning.  The irritability is a nagging feeling that I'm about to explode because everything is just, well, irritating.  My hair feels like it's tangling around my neck, my shirt is just plain itchy, my bracelets are squeezing my wrist such that my hand will fall off, the sound of the air is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the little voice in my head is screaming for everyone else to just "shut up".   The irritability can herein be differentiated from the mood swings – with the mood swings, I actually DO scream for everyone to "shut up".  With the irritability, my mental edits remain in place (mostly). 

 

#5 – The sleeplessness.  Oh, the sleeplessness!  If I wasn't already moody, with a messed up tummy, I would be just from the lack of sleep!  Every couple of weeks, I have about 6 days of virtually no sleep.   And it's never the same sleeplessness.  Some nights, I can't fall asleep.  Other nights, I fall asleep quickly, but then wake up again after a short time.  Still other nights, I just sleep restlessly – never really soundly asleep, but never really awake, either.

 

Basically, what I'm saying is that…. THIS STINKS.  I'm going to start praying that it doesn't last long.

I'm putting together a scrapbook of sorts to capture some of our vacation memories. I'm reasonably certain that I will NEVER take on another such project.

Why, you ask? Well...

For one thing, it's darned expensive. I'm constantly needing something more, or something else. And none of it is very cheap. I can totally understand why things like "project life" are so popular. At first passing, to a scrapbooking "newbie", it sounds pricey, but in reality it's not.

For another, it's very time-consuming. It takes quite a bit of time to go through the pictures, and then sort through pages and papers, and then find the coordinating journaling cards, and finally put it all together into a good-looking layout. (Not to mention actually writing out the journaling cards!)

And, finally, for me, it's draining. I'm using up all of my creativity on it. It's not always easy to comeup with good layouts, and it's certainly not always easy to come up with a series of good layouts that have "flow" from page to page.

I'm seriously considering other options to capture our future memories.

I'm so SHORT. And, no, I don't mean physically, though I am certainly no giant when it comes to phyical stature. I mean in my writing. I find I'm so worried about rambling that I just don't write enough... at all.

I must work on that.

But not today. Today, I'll still be short.

:)