Patching Stories and Fabric

Thundering. 6 AM. Still dark. My dog pants, drools and paces. He tries to climb onto my lap. That is not possible. He weighs 70 pounds. I cannot take away his pain. I cannot take any of my children’s pain. I cannot solve their problems.

My coffee is bulletproof. I like that word. It protects me. It sustains me. It is made with butter and MCT coconut oil. It helps me solve my problems. It helps me eat less of what I don’t need and more of what I do. For lunch I will make massaged organic kale salad. 

My dog, Highlin', pants beside me. He was Johnny's dog. Johnny asked if he could stay with me 10 years ago when he became an extreme athlete, kayaking class five rivers. He once was lost in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Confronted three rattlesnakes finding his way home. HIghlin' has been here ever since. 

I am writing in low light at the folded down cherry dining room table. It is in the room usually called the living room. Larry’s music collection and some of our books are here. My new patchwork kimono, waiting to be photographed, hangs against the shoji screen.  The table is covered with an old lace tablecloth that I shibori dyed as part of the tapestry for my new home. It is the dark crimson of a garden rose, the color of a precious garnet, or as “Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours” describes, the outside of Quills of Terico. A purplish red. We call this room in the library.

I am old now. I am reading Stephen Jenkinson‘s book, “Come of Age, The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble.” He writes, “Without  the tutelage of limits and endings, we have no elders to practice and incarnate the wisdom of enough. . . no record of noble restraint that would make us an ancestor worth claiming, no defeat of the nobility making kind.” 

Old is a good thing. Today I focus on the tiny moments. Use remnants to patchwork new designs. Find books to give away. Wait for phone calls, and for the rain to stop.