If only pictures were words...

 

This morning, chilled inside and out, I have been staying under the covers (the top one being a warm alpaca throw my mother gave me decades ago) while I read, do word games, make lists for today...ignoring as long as I can the day's call to get up, get dressed and do something.

There is plenty to do, inside and out...to wit:  this blog and its thousand words waiting to unfold themselves to you...

• travels to the idyllic Victoria, B.C.     
  
  
• visits with dear friends of my youth     
  
  
• my 78th year at the shore, partly cloudy, with loss   

  

  
      
• the leavings of my Aunt Sadie snuggling into my over-crowded but welcoming house and history       
  
  
  
• old photographs in a box and an overflowing scrap book that I am struggling to make sense of               
  
  
   
• a painting I've finished which I'm struggling to like (and the next one, sitting empty on the workroom table, so far only a blur of gray-blue cloud);   
• last night's dream, set of all places at the edge of the North Sea (no picture of that).

But none of those are revealing themselves.  Not that I don't want to write them; it's just...I don't know.  When I finally open my laptop, nothing but this word-wandering seems to ensue.

Last night I half repaired the arms of a wing chair I've had since the late '70's and don't want to give up.  I'm attached to that chair, one of the first pieces of furniture bought for our very first house.  The boys were toddling around the San Pedro store, climbing  over sofas and under tables while we chose this one.

But mostly I keep it because it's comfortable and has, no matter what house I have lived in, found its perfect place somewhere...living room, bedroom, study, whatever.  It's stood now for a few years on the corner of Front and Porch; under it is a small stool Mr. Bailey, the woodworker from West Virginia, made.  I can slip into it and watch the whole house from this corner.  And the birds in its fabric, flying among the most unlikely floral pattern, center me.

Alexander, I notice, also makes for it when he comes over, first opening the glass cabinet where I keep my black wedding glassware (see cabinet above), and choosing one for his juice cube concoction, then settling down to unlock his words.  He's coming over tonight to stay while his dad goes to a concert.  

He's growing up, and has less time for after-school visits now.  I run out to catch a quick hug from him as he gets off the bus in front of the house.  Friday nights, when they are free, they come for dinner. While I see him with pleasure as he matures, I think that there is also a kind of grief to growing.  It's Fall, besides, the season of rue and sorrow.  Maybe that's it.  The cold feet in my dream would seem to point to that.

But to return to blogdom:  If only pictures were words, you'd already have read all those subjects listed above, one at a time, in order.  

Alas, order doesn't seem to be the order of the day these days.