I picked this mirror up at a yard sale for $3 a few weeks ago. I think I'll paint it white.
I look in the mirror and ask myself: Who am I?
…A mother, pet mom, wife, blogger, gardener, friend, neighbor…
I drive through the quiet streets with the awning of tall pine trees looming overhead, looking for Bonnie. I can’t help but think of the missing 13 year old girls. The ones I wrote about, searched for, in another place and time. What it must have been like for their parents. Still like…though those girls have been missing for decades. You can read about it here.
Is this what their parents did for days and weeks and months? Drive around, peering into every face they encountered. And then as the years passed, and then the decades, I know they must still have held out vestiges of hope.
I noticed yesterday that just down the street they have felled the remaining pine trees next to the newly constructed Marriott for some new construction to begin. I wondered where those wild animals that lived there ran to as the big machines came in, roaring with purpose? Did one of those wild creatures come into my yard and take my Bonnie away?
I walk in the bedroom and the bed is made. And I ask myself: When did I do that? I must be on auto pilot.
I go into the kitchen and eye that gift basket. It has lots of goodies in it. Chocolate and cheeses and sausages. I spy Turtles chocolates and realize I haven’t had one in many years. I wonder how much of that gift basket will be there by the end of the weekend. And how many pounds it will translate into to seek comfort there.
I have never been a halfway decent liar. I think you can look at my face and everything you want to know is automatically revealed. I could not play poker if my life depended on it.
I think of all the blogs I’ve visited over the years, and so many say in their About Me profile: …I’m married to my very best friend… You must be lucky women. You must have done something right. Or have good karma. Or know something I don’t. Because if something happened… You would need another best friend to comfort you.
You would understand that your house of cards could come tumbling down at any minute. Still, you hope. Isn’t that what we women do? Tend the house and gardens and children and pets and hope?
Abi keeps whining. She is the Yorkie that must have been a sheep dog in a former life. It is her self-imposed “job” to make sure everyone is in at night. If Bonnie or Clyde was outside and it was dark and time for bed, she would be relentless about barking and refusing to come in herself. To make us understand that her job was not over until everyone was safely inside.
Clyde has lost his other half. He is pitiful and keeps crying and following me around. He won’t go sleep on the guest room bed, which had become “their” room. It’s as though it’s tainted. He perches himself in a basket of magazines or sits behind my computer monitor. The last few days he has plopped himself on my printer. It’s the third printer he’s ruined by sitting his big self on it. Now all the paper jams. I don’t have the heart to shoo him off. Printers don’t seem so important at the moment. To hell with it.
I think some people are sort of addicted to risk taking. I know I did that in my younger years. The adrenalin would shoot through my veins and I would feel so alive. But as I got older, that didn’t seem so attractive any more. I just wanted a nice peaceful little life with a garden to tend and daily habits that tethered me to earth and normalcy.
I’m sure some of you are wondering how I could put this out there. Onto the worldwide web. But I’m not good at showing pretty little pictures on the wall when they are of no consequence to what’s going on in my life at the moment. Just like I’m not a poker player. If I used this space for that, my life would be a book of fiction. And hey, there are great writers out there if you want to read fiction. I could name many on my bookshelves.
You visualize yourself in another life. Another cozy little house somewhere far away. With your familiar things on the wall and your quilts folded just so on your bed. Your favorite candles wafting their sweet scent throughout the room. The unknown is scary. But so is knowing you can’t change anything.
I don’t blame you if you don’t want to read my rambling posts right now. Don’t feel you must because we are blog friends. I will find a new normal. I will tether myself to that orbit and hang on for dear life. And then I will show pretty pictures and talk about mundane things I usually put here to share with you.
For now, I will dust off the counters and put away food and straighten things that look off-kilter. Keep to my pattern and go out for the mail and water my plants and feed the pets.
Maybe that is how you manage to find normal again. To just plod forward. Because no one ever promised me a rose garden.
Every time I am outside and walk to the front, I see this loveseat. Minus Bonnie. I see the clumps of white fur she shed there, or licked off. And it kicks me right in the gut again that I may never see her again or know what happened to her. I tell myself to clean it off.
But I can’t bring myself to erase the small traces of her that I have left.
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