I was so relieved at the end of Holiday Market, where I masked almost all of the time. It seemed to me that people were grateful for that rather than avoiding me...I'd say about 20% of the population both internal and external was masking. I know I felt safer. I had one quickly suppressed sore throat episode and got exposed to Covid, but I didn't get sick. I felt safer on Xmas Eve, and didn't mask much that day. I tried not to hug anyone but I did a little. It's emotional to end a season on a holiday that is kind of fraught for me, although I weathered the emotions well I thought.
When I went on the 27th to load out, I didn't mask, and also went downtown to the library and grocery that day, masked inside. About six days later, not having seen a single human, I came down with what I think was RSV. I didn't have a fever, just a lot of congestion which caused a cough. It has lasted a week and isn't quite over. I tested negative for Covid twice.
My respiratory distress is always linked to particular foods for me, dairy and citrus, and I did push the limits of that around Xmas, because everything has butter in it and I love satsumas too. So it got kind of bad, not restricting my breathing or anything, just gross mucus and a lot of coughing and sneezing. I believe it was a virus and it has almost gone away. I figure I got it from touching something downtown...door handles, whatever. RSV persists on surfaces for a few hours but it was also possible it was some other virus. I have isolated and taken care of myself but it wasn't fun and I still can barely eat anything without reacting to it. It will be a long time before I have any dairy. I put all the cookies and things in the freezer.
So not a fun start on vacation time but the upside was I didn't really do any work to speak of for the last several weeks. Right now I am obsessed with sorting through papers that I've saved for various reasons and books I am most likely not going to read. Books go to the Little Free Libraries and papers are just recycled or saved in smaller units for a little longer.
I'm a lot better at letting things go but recognizing the feelings of loss that come with that. I'm wrapping up my OCF volunteer experience and letting go of being an insider on the issues and gossip. I always like to know what is going on with everyone but I figure over time I will probably hear the important stories, and it's too many people to keep track of anyway. Lots of things I might rather not know. I worked really hard at increasing communication for members of OCF, particularly crafters, but as I went through my records I felt like there will be no net gain over time for the time I spent and things I put in place. My work will be erased or supplanted by the efforts of others, some well-meaning and some not, and that's just the way it goes. OCF is giant and never stays the same, whether that is good or bad overall...it's not possible for one person to have much real effect on any part of it.
I'm proud of my efforts and glad I tried but also relieved and happy to be out of the way of it now. I don't feel obligated to respond to anyone or monitor any FB (except for Negative Shit) or lead or even follow. I was just an observer and complainer for a long time and while I may try not to be a complainer I will still be an astute observer of all of the ways of a membership organization and can do that from somewhat of a distance. I'm disciplining myself to care a lot less about it all. At some point I will stop watching the Board meetings, maybe soon.
As for Saturday Market and the Kareng Fund, not leaving. I was named Volunteer of the Year,
I feel like I am running out of time to get every part of my life in order for the inevitable end of my ability to do this kind of work. If I'm going to write any books I can't just put it off that much longer. I doubt I will write any fiction. I had a period of that and will collect all of it in a form I can access easily if I want to go back and edit it, which would be needed. A friend gave me a copy of a story I had written about her 20 years ago, about an incident that was meaningful for us both, and she was still moved to tears by it, but frankly, it left me kind of cold. It was over-the-top emotional and dramatic. I am absolutely no longer that person so it gave me insight into why I got a lot of confusing reaction to my writing back then, and to some of my actions as well, so it set of a period of self-examining with a different perspective than I've had before.
Last night I went through things I'd saved from John's school career and it was actually pretty depressing for me. In many ways I was not a good parent. I was self-involved and had a lot of work to do both to keep us alive and well and to process my own issues, so I was not emotionally nurturing in the ways I would see as important now. He was on his own to a large degree and I can see that in his behaviors and attitudes...at the time I wasn't able to do it any other way I suppose. I think I saw it as letting him have the freedom to develop as a person but more guidance and structure would have really helped. Single-parenting has some definite drawbacks. He had good teachers some of the time and he responded to that, but by high school they didn't have much time or ability to influence him and neither did I. I was present, volunteering and working at school, but I think that made it worse for him as home wasn't different enough to be a sanctuary and he experienced me as part of the system. When he quit he wouldn't even discuss it. Our struggles were harsh.
I can track his anti-progress as he developed a personality and resistance to the systems, which both of his parents transmitted to him somewhat unknowingly...I mean, I can't get behind the systems without my own resistance so I wasn't selling him on it properly. Once I realized that math and science achievers were going to get channeled into oppressive militaristic channels, most likely, I wasn't as willing to push him into that, though I did support his interests and tried to get him the resources. We were poor, though, so I had to ask for help and that might have kept him out of some things. I don't think he got to go to computer camp and even Culture Jam refused us a scholarship because people thought I could afford it...I did afford it, but it was hard. People didn't see the truth of what looked like financial security because I looked like a successful crafter and we had that big business for awhile (which left me with little but debt, which I kept private as it was embarrassing.) I got $200 a month in child support. I was remodeling a house for us so he could have a room that wasn't on the way to the bathroom. I had to work multiple jobs and that meant all the time. I still feel misunderstood with my poverty consciousness. Getting something like dementia or a disability terrifies me. I won't even buy myself a new vacuum cleaner or consume much of anything outside of food.
I couldn't get him private music lessons when he might have responded...things like that. We didn't socialize with people with money and resources. He didn't have much privilege, which is kind of a good thing in retrospect, but he internalized being poor and lost his enthusiasm for trying somehow. Somehow he found out that extra effort would not be rewarded and wasn't worth it. I'm sure being poor was hard on him. I got all of his toys at Goodwill. Health care was a nightmare...I would put off taking him to the doctor in a way that shames me no end now. Poverty is serious, and people you know are suffering from it. Fortunately at this point, I am not, really...my hard work paid off, but that doesn't mean I will ever feel safe in this world.
No doubt I am missing a lot by just looking at these school-related artifacts but he didn't give me a lot else to get to know him with. I didn't know how to draw him out, and he didn't share a lot of himself with me. We were right on top of each other in our little house and I was working on the other house from when he was 5 to 16...my goal was to give him a room with a door on it that he could lock and he never did get that. As a builder I was self-taught as I am with everything and there was something about the way I hung his bedroom door that made it not close properly. So even after he got some real private space, it wasn't enough. I was always there, which I suppose is why he learned to close me out.
I was 39 when he was born, which was good and not so good, as my forties and fifties were full of some radical self-improvement and it was clunky. I was in therapy, co-counseling, learned NVC (kind of) and spent a ton of time writing, going to meetings, and having my very necessary adult growth spurt. I left him pretty stranded when he was a teenager, and his Dad was even less help. He survived it, and had good friends, but it was a lot less than I would have wished for him. It's not something he wants to talk about yet, though I keep expecting that part. I know I went through it with my own pretty self-absorbed parents. My dad abandoned us when I was 20 (suicide) and my Mom was always distracted with having too many kids and too much work to do. I felt loved, and my son feels loved, but there were things I blamed them for and for which they were guilty. So I expect him to have some resentment and blame. I think that is not something he will want to address unless he becomes a parent and starts to pick it apart...which I don't think he is planning. I try not to feel like that is my fault. It's hard to imagine anyone not feeling reluctant to reproduce in this world, though someone did tell me once that the reason they could do it was that they believed in life.
I believe in life, because the natural world is something I pay a lot of attention to, but I am not sure how much I believe in love. I am a-romantic and can't really get into anything celebrating those areas of human interaction. I participate on some levels but I do not gush and that story reminded me of how far I have gone away from all of that. I regret pursuing whatever I was pursuing in my fifties when I was on OK Cupid and trying to get this one guy to be with me. I'm grateful to him for refusing me, as painful as it was. I learned a lot from just that and he pointed me toward many useful resources that did help me. I suppose I had to go through that. But I wish I had spent that energy being a better mom of a teenager. His needs should have been what I was thinking about (I was...) and his future should have been more in my goals list. I guess regrets are important to, so we can do better, but today sucks.
Not that much I can do to fix it, but I am a very supportive mother of a 34-year old, within the limits we are fenced into now. His birthday is coming up. As always it is bittersweet, as all the holidays are, when I compare my life to the mainstream lives online and TV (I know, don't do that) and I try in various ways to do better with him. I will keep trying with whatever good time we have left, and I will try very, very hard to not burden him with my aging self. So I will not text him my feelings about his report cards and all the things I did wrong. I'm telling you few people who enjoy my drama and bullshit for whatever reasons...I'm glad you get something out of it and I carefully don't really want to know who all of you are, for the most part. I'm writing this for me, because as I found out when I was in my thirties, and am still finding out, I am a flawed and selfish person. Not the only one, but it's not something I can really hide. I'm glad people can appreciate me anyway, even though what I do is hide it with hard work. I will work hard for the common good. I will work hard. I will work hard for you, albeit tangentially. I know how to work hard.
I don't know how to not work hard, but once I sort all of these papers, maybe I can work on that. (*bitter laughter*) Happy New Year!
As a follow-up, now that I have gone through all of the school papers, I found out there were some good years when things went just right, and all along I did have a lot of involvement, whether that was really good or bad. I just had to pull back sometimes. It's forgivable. Here's a photo from kindergarten.
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