Everyone is busy!

Everyone I know anyway, is very busy this week. The three-day Holiday Market weekend went well for me. Sales are up, my feelings of extreme vulnerability on Friday settled out and I had lots of friends coming by to say the semi-annual hello at our gathering place. I'm really enjoying the quiet today although this cold weather is not pleasing me. All of the days we were indoors it was sunny, and today it is not. I need to get outside for exercise and to deal with the leaves and it's a bit forbidding out there. Freezing rain will not be compatible with laundry.

I chase the sun around my yard this time of year hanging and rehanging the wet clothes. Sometimes the wind will help them dry but mostly they need sun. I'm not sorry I got rid of my dryer about ten years ago now, but I might have to resort to going to the laundromat this week as it does not look favorable. Even that seems like far too much work to do at the moment, but I am almost out of coffee so will have to venture out.

It seems like complaining to say how draining retail is but that's a fact for me. I need quiet and solitude and to not feel at the mercy of someone's wants and needs. A couple of my younger friends on Gnome Alley asked Willy and me to be their parents...they were half-serious but it sounded horrifying and welcoming at the same time. I miss parenting. I dreamt I went to church to see Willy speak, which he didn't do, but I sat next to a small family with a baby and immediately picked up the baby and cuddled it to sleep. It surprises me that even though my son is almost 26 I still want my parenting role back. When I really think about it I don't, as there were plenty of hard parts and I still have at least one friend who is completely judgemental and dismissive of the job I did, which of course puts me into a spin. I did the best I could, which was apparently okay, good enough, adequate, and in a few ways really fine.

I never realized back then what parts of the decision-making and life-styling would do the most longterm damage. I was mostly focused on safety and avoiding trauma and treating the kid like a person with his own rights, so I didn't apply enough discipline perhaps. Maybe I was completely right about that, though, as control tactics and punishment are only really effective in the short term and leading the young person to think critically about issues is a far more important life skill than being afraid of what one's parents will think. I was looking for my father's approval decades after he was dead and gone, and that was a fear-based concern. My son is afraid of my judgement about things like him getting an air conditioner. He probably feels bad about using the dryer...well, no, he probably feels like it is essential like most people. I told him that air conditioners were fine for people who lived in apartments built without cross-ventilation and that I don't judge him about things anyway. I love him!

I think my hippie ways serve me well for the most part and serve the earth too, as I make fewer compromises for comfort than most Americans. I've been reading about the Oregon Trail times and the genocide of the peoples who populated this country when the white guys came and every way I can separate myself from the paradigm of white privilege is good for my soul. Of course I can't change my color and being as true to the best aspects of my gender is pretty hard too. I accept that I have many ways to grow to be a better human for the challenges of the times, but I can see that as I age I will have to compromise my ideals in some ways. I drove my car twice last week when I really didn't have to. It made sense to, but it was about comfort more than anything else. I seem to believe that making choices for my own comfort betrays those who don't get to make those choices.

Heart strings are being pulled tightly and this season makes it worse as the things that renew me are dying too, my garden plants and the birds. I found my yellow-rumped warbler dead. I put out four cards in the vendor center for losses of community members and three were for deaths. The Kareng Fund met and discussed four grants, when some months we have none. I shudder with my empathy for those undergoing losses, knowing that I will not be free of that kind of loss. I don't know why I expect to be. I'm getting more resigned to it, more aware that loss is part of life and distress about it makes it worse. Acceptance does not have to be cold. There is warmth in talking about it, giving hugs and listening time and allowing the openness of bringing it to each other. That kind of comfort is right and can be indulged freely and often. One friend suggested that a Death Cafe would be a good step: a gathering where all subjects around death could be discussed and analyzed. I'd go. We've all learned helpful techniques for navigating loss that can be shared. It isn't going to be avoided.

So on that note I will embark on my day of restoration. Quiet, keeping the heat turned up, putting things in order, and reading will help with so many things. All the rest of the days will be work days, probably packed with details and I need this day off severely. Don't call me. I'll see if I can make time to go through some of my warm clothing and find some things to give away. Shedding possessions is getting easier. Making light of things helps. I'll decorate my Christmas branch. Hope you all have a great week; see you Saturday!