Vingette 17

The Loneliness Factor

It is a gray winter day here at the bottom end; homesickness is grabbing at my shirttail.  Typically I arrange my travel plans back to the loving arms of my friends in the U.S. close to the dead of winter.  Scheduling my trip home during winter is a strategy to help me try to elude the loneliness factor. This year Scott doesn’t have a conference until the end of October, so I must pull up my bootstraps and figure out a way to turn a few lemons into lemonade.  Just last week as Murphy and I were on our weekly shopping trip, I had the nerve to lecture him about the glass is half full attitude: as if I have it all figured out. 

Here’s a recap.

“I had the hospital hell dream last night,” Murphy tells me.

“The hospital hell dream?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I have this dream where I am stuck in a hospital and the people there think that I have done something really, really bad. I spend all my time trying to get out and they are looking for me around every corner,” he explained.

“Oh, that hospital hell dream,” I said.

“Yeeh, yeeh, I either have the hospital hell dream or the save my sister in the elevator dream, and last night it was hospital hell,” says Murphy.

“What happens with your sister in the elevator?” I reluctantly ask.

“Well, I hear my sister calling for help from this elevator that is stuck halfway between two floors. The door is open just a bit and as I fit myself through the door the elevator starts going up to the next floor.  I barely make it into the elevator without dying and then realize that my sister has gotten out and I am stuck inside.  We keep going around and around,” Murphy says in an angry voice. 

I almost laughed when he imitated his sister’s high shrill voice calling “help me Murphy.”

“Those sound like dreams of persecution to me,” I told him.

“My brain persecutes me,” he said.

“No, I mean that you feel persecuted for some reason and are playing it out in a dream that makes you the victim,” I continued.

“I have to stop doing that,” says Murphy.

“I guess we all have to train ourselves to look at each situation that happens to us in our life and believe that the glass is half full,” I say, hating the way I sound.

Some quiet time followed my little spiel and then Murphy pipes up, “I think my glass would only be 1/8^th full compared to everyone else’s.”

“Maybe so Murphy,” I said, “or maybe you have a shot glass where everyone else has a tumbler.”

“Yeeh, yeeh, yeeh, my glass is just smaller than everyone else,” he agrees.

We both laugh.  Full circle; Murphy back to seeing himself as the victim.

The “glass is half full,” works for me most of the time, but when it has rained for three days straight, you can count on me needing a good cry because I miss my friend Kathie in San Diego. I resist calling her when I am down because I don’t feel as if I deserve to be down. It only takes a moment to look out my studio window at the intense green, or at the mighty white caps marching down the Waiheke Channel, to stop me from picking up the phone.  The beauty of this place slaps me out of these small bouts of self pity, even if just for a moment. 

But missing my friends: Kimi and Laurie, Carol and Kathie, Jois and Kathleen; runs deeper than a stretch of bad weather.  It is true that a person who has grown up in California, where benign weather is the norm, can be sent into premature cabin fever after only one day of rain.  But the close ties with people you have known, and have known you for close to fifty years, well that is an amazing and marvelous thing.  I always yearn for their company; it is just that the gray winter days bring it closer to the surface.  Craving a good belly laugh with my oldest friend Carol is ever present, but during summer it stays buried deep enough to tolerate. 

 I miss lots of things from home.  Things like bean burritos and knowing my way around the back roads of San Diego County.  There is comfort in knowing that I can walk into Laurie’s front door without knocking, and that she will always say, “hey girl,” and give me a big hug, followed by Boomer and Presley ramming their Labrador noses into my crotch; the whole time Mr. Widener stands back with that twinkle in his eye, watching the reunion.  Laurie married our high school biology teacher, Mr. Widener about 12 years ago.  Kimi and I still have a hard time not calling him Mr. Widener, so it has stuck.  Kimi and Laurie and I have been friends since Kindergarten at Brier Patch Elementary School. Our houses were no further apart than half a block in each direction.  We know too much about the other ones, which can make for a few tense moments at events like second wedding rehearsal dinners.  Part of our special relationship includes zinging each other with historic references.  Our kids have grown up in the midst of our crazy friendship.  Once, Kimi was laughing so hard at something Lol said during a game of Balderdash, her daughter Erin stood up and said, “Stop it mom, you are scaring me!” 

I must admit that this kind of out of control laughing is what I miss most.  My New Zealand friends are lots of fun, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but they prefer British humor to American humor and so you can see where that leaves me with the laughing thing.  It’s the difference between being satisfied with a chuckle rather than a belly laugh.  Yes, I ache for the belly laugh; the kind of laugh that makes you plead, “Stop, I can’t breathe,” which only sends you off again. This kind of laughing makes a person feel hysterical and giddy afterwards.  The most impressive thing about this breed of laughing is that it has to be spontaneous: it cannot be contrived; it is a thing to be cherished because it is totally organic.

Kimi came for a visit to New Zealand last year.  We had several encounters with this type of high quality laughing.  One episode cropped up when we were in the South Island and staying at a quiet Buddhist retreat that my son had recommended.  We had been assigned a room with bunk beds and not enough space to swing a cat.  That in and of itself was funny, but the rules of this rather hippyish place required you to use the bathroom (outhouse) quite a ways from the house.  I held my bladder all night long because I didn’t relish the idea of trying to find my way in the dark to the spider laden outhouse down the dirt road.  So the morning dawned and up Kim popped from the bottom bunk, full of piss and vinegar.  I had to go to the bathroom urgently, but couldn’t get down from the top bunk.  Kim clung to the wall laughing as I tried to get down by bracing one foot on the wall three feet away and the other foot feeling around aimlessly for the bed frame below.  Knowing that she was laughing made me laugh, and I am not proud of the fact that I had a little accident. Later, Kim approached the manager and told him unequivocally that we would need a different room, “Women over fifty, don’t do bunk beds,” she told him. 

My son Brett filmed the other good laugh.  He and his girlfriend Rebecca came over to the island while Kimi was visiting.  We decided to hike down to Passage Rock Winery for lunch. After a few glasses of wine Kim and I decided to try out the trampoline.  Kim started jumping before I could stand up properly so I was bouncing up and down in a jack knifed position; with hands and feet hitting the rubber mat at the same time.  Kim began laughing so hard that she finally fell down into a ball and I then took advantage of her weakness and started jumping as mightily as I could while saying, “Now let’s see you try and get up, Mrs. Smarty-pants.”   I am homesick enough today to watch this little clip and relive the laugh.              

 

When Tipi was alive, I could count on her to help me keep homesickness at bay. Tipi left a big hole in that department when she died.  In my current attempts to fill this hole I inadvertently have created a bigger hole.  It is only a matter of time before Scott will turn into the Sheriff and call a halt to my new friends popping in for a visit each morning.  Or should I say pooping in for a visit each morning. I started setting out birdseed for the sparrows, and now the little buggers get antsy if it isn’t out there on their dawn breaking schedule.  They send one of their underlings to sit on the barbeque and look longingly into my kitchen window.  Yesterday, I took the dirty laundry downstairs and when I came back up and sat down at my computer to work, I found a thick white streak down my computer screen.  They are getting a bit pushy if you ask me. Truthfully I am in big trouble here.  I am the kind of person who caves in easily when I feel that there is someone in need; in this case, sparrows in need. I am the anthropomorphic queen, and can actually make myself cry thinking about the poor little hungry sparrows not making it through the harsh New Zealand winter if I don’t come to their aid.  The crazy thing is that these silly birds showing up like clock work, keep me company, so I will commit to feeding them, but maybe a little further out in the yard, away from my computer. Today is a soggy day by anyone’s standards, yet out there on the ledge right now, six of them sit in the rain, trying to ignite my anthropomorphic fuse and win a second tray full seeds.  How on earth did I get myself into this?

It’s the little things that cause you to do daft things as you grow older.  Many of my memories are tied up with spending time in my Dad’s company.  I am sure this is where the damn sparrow feeding thing came from in the first place.  My Dad and I used sit out on his porch and watch the hummingbirds have dog fights over the swimming pool.  He loved watching the birds.  If a bird built a nest under the eaves, he would make my mom and I walk quietly past so as not to disturb the babies.

My Dad

 At 85, he emerged from back surgery with full blown dementia. It became very hard to find things that held his attention.  Every time I flew back home I would rack my brain to find some new way to make him happy.  The award winning idea turned out to be the bird feeders placed at every window around the entire house.  I patiently coaxed the shy doves to the feeder by the window that he ate his breakfast.  I learned about the smaller finches and how they needed to hang upside down to feed.  It took a few weeks to lure the different kinds of birds to the feeders but when they showed up for the first time we were both elated.  Watching the doves flock around the feeding tray each morning was the only thing that could still make my Dad light up.  He would stand there balancing on his walker pointing at the birds.  It gave me a secure feeling knowing that those birds would show up every morning for him, even when I left to come back to New Zealand.  Yeah, it’s the little things.   Now one lone dove shows up with all the sparrows.  I have to believe it is my Dad coming to tell me hello.

 

The rain has eased up a tad, but the backyard is a pool of standing water. All this water will sink down to the clay and then run off to the sea. So too will these feelings of homesickness trickle away when the sun comes out.  As luck would have it, Scott has called to tell me that he has booked our tickets back to the U.S. for late Oct. We will spend a week in Arizona with Kimi in November.  Laurie and Ray will drive over and we will celebrate an early Thanksgiving together.

After Scott flies back to New Zealand I will be staying on for three weeks.  In the space of three weeks time I will desperately try to fill myself up with the love from Kat and her garden, and have lots of long conversations with Kathie about kids, growing older, and the things that we really want to do before we die.  I will drive up to Carol’s house and add another memory of laughing hard enough to choke to my collection.  Not sure if I will find Jois, since she and Glen are sailing around the Sea of Cortez and are out of touch at the moment.  

 

Until then I will keep the anticipation of our upcoming trip home tucked away in my arsenal, to combat the winter blues.  Unlike Murphy, my glass is more than 1/8^th full: it is overflowing. 

Never underestimate the power of small things…thank God it’s raining again; the bird poop on the deck will get washed away before Scott gets home.