Memorial Day

 It's going to rain...the forecast for the next few days.  My hard ground and the plants struggling in it will be happy, and I will be happy for them.  In celebration of Memorial Day, I've asked a few friends in on Monday, rain or no.   I've got plenty of the first summer's foods ready to be fixed into watermelon salad with mint, roasted potato salad with thyme, baked corn (or cornbread...haven't decided yet) with cayenne and green onion tops, chicken tikka, shrimp the same. (Mary Ellen has her desserts in progress already).

I always enjoy fixing holidays, but frankly this time it's given me something to do to lift my spirits.  As if it knows a different definition of Memorial than this weekend honors, memory has been assaulting me lately.  I am, as we all are, missing Aunt Sadie, and with her passing the passing of all others come to light.  Our griefs, as Hopkins reminds, are our own reflection in the mirror of mortality.  I know that, but it seems these past two years have riven us of more than death's share.

The assaults come from strange places.  Mostly I sleep pretty soundly at night, start to finish, but last night I woke from the clock in the other room striking 3, and wondered.  I must have been dreaming, but the visions there seemed real.  Waking, they continued, one after another...ancient ones from childhood, silly ones, foolish ones from the years since, dangerous, heart-breaking ones, too.  It occurred to me, before I drifted back to sleep again (the same films running in my head), that they must be trying to tell me something, solve some problem I may or may not have known needed solving.  

During the day, a walk down the hall to my workroom stops me short.  A collection of old photos I am meaning to sort and reorder, I give up on after a few vain attempts.  Memories on walls and in boxes, or floating invisible in the air, shake my resolve, even for simple tasks.

What they're after I haven't figured out yet, though at this age I had better accept the challenge.  This morning, darkening, cooling, moistening into the weather to come, portent with change, may bring some enlightenment.

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Meanwhile (here's a switch and change), in an hour, Joseph and I are going to pick up a small settee I found yesterday at ReStore, the Habitat for Humanity thrift place I troll for finds. A few weeks ago, my favorite chair I'd had since the late '70's collapsed on one weakened leg.   I'd already sent it out to Dan, the chair fixer, but the emptiness of the corner by the window where I'd spent countless hours in its comfort seemed to be needier than that chair occupied.  

My living area isn't big; nonetheless, as is my wont, I have crowded it with sitting and dining furniture (there's a visiting piano, too) until there is not much room left to walk.  So relaxing space is at premium.  I began searching for something that, though small, would at least add an extra place to sit.

I meant to go down to Pittsboro, where their ReStore has a whole building full of good furniture, but I thought I'd try the nearby one first.  When I walked in the door, the very piece I could have imagined was facing me, looking new and bright, calling my name from that persimmon color I have on my walls and the small white dots that spelled cheer. I pulled out my measuring tape, checking the size, dismissed the 8 inches extra I'd assumed, and went to the counter to buy it.  It's going to fit, I insisted to myself.  At home, measuring again, the space appeared, nicely, to accommodate it.

 I think that there is a twist to that purchase which entwines memory and change.  My old chair, which I loved and still do, its leg dangling precariously from the worn fabric, might be the end of something bigger than itself.  It's fixable, the chair, at some not insignificant expense, and I might still want to try.  But if it comes back to me repaired, it will be enwrapped in a different sort of affection, the kind one can shift off to the side, usable still but with its mortality tried.  Like mine, with that rush of memory, culling the past to make possible the future.

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N.B.  Nothing goes simply when anticipation is in the mix.  We left for ReStore in light rain, so I'd brought a tarp...but it was the wrong one I pulled hastily out of the shed, the one you may have seen earlier in the season under all that mulch I was shoveling.  A once-perfectly-clean couch rode home dry, but lightly dusted in shredded hardwood.

Still, it vacuumed off, as Joseph said it would, and sits in place now, where I am about to settle for a while.

For settling I need.  Fortunately, on such a day, it's easy to do.