Mockingbird Hill Cottage

The yucky weather continues. Both Don and I feel groggy and take 1 or even 2 naps during the day. Today, we’ll get more thunderstorms in the afternoon and there’s yet another excessive heat advisory. It feels as if I’ve spent most of my summer indoors, which, believe me, is not the way I like it.

We stand inside the house and watch bunnies chasing each other and the groundhog dining on our grass. And there’s a steady stream of birds at the birdbath. I plan ahead as to when to water outside; if it rained the day before, I’ll do it later in the day. If it hasn’t, I’m loading that huge watering can with water at an early hour, then dousing everything that gets a lot of sun and all the pots on the porch.

I’m really tired of this weather trend.

I finished The Year of Magical Thinking  yesterday morning. I found it so moving and brave and beautifully written. Reading it for the first time at this time in my life is hard. It pushed buttons, things I don’t want to linger on, but fear deeply. I think about death a lot. I think about the now very real possibility of losing Don. Or, Don’s real possibility of losing me. Both of us have said many times that we wouldn’t want to go on without the other. I can’t imagine a life without my husband. I know some of you have lost your partner and/or spouse and have already had to face this. I watched my dad cope with the loss of my mother. He tried very hard to stay active and hopeful but it was devastating for him and he died eighteen months later.

There are no answers. It’s just something that preys on my mind. Life and death.

This is a passage I read out loud to Don the other night when we were reading in bed:

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. “She didn’t know the songs” I recall being told a friend of a friend had said after an attempt to repeat the experience. Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John’s eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine, I saw myself through the eyes of others. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I realized that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger. – Joan Didion

Boy, did that hit me. For me, it would be since the age of forty-one.

I’m still pondering passages in that book. I’m still and always worrying about loss and the end of life.

It may not be your cup of tea, but my goodness, what a powerful account of love and marriage and loss and identity and survival.

I’m back to Bring Up the Bodies, the second book in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series. I put it aside when I played catch up with the Daniel Silva spy thrillers. I’m awaiting James Lee Burke’s newest, Clete, from my local library system. It’s been out almost two months and I was #3 in the queue when it finally arrived at our local libraries and I’ve just now reached #1. And that doesn’t mean it’s coming to me this week, so I’m reading what I have and what I’m in the mood for on these hazy, hot and humid days.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.