June 4, 2025
Welcome to June!
Not only is it fully springtime, but the few
television shows that I do watch have aired their last episodes for the season.
This means that my life is once again unscheduled every day after 7 p.m. Being
of an age, and no longer working outside the home, one would think it safe to
assume that I have nothing but time.
And yet I’m busy every day and wonder where I can find
even more of that time thing in which to do more stuff.
As one gets older, one tends to reflect on the past a
great deal—sometimes if only for assurance that the memories so carefully
stored are, indeed, still accessible. I can recall times that, when I was
child, my sister would accuse me of being lazy. I probably was, as a child.
After all, it’s our nature to start out life as tiny, self-centered creatures.
What seems completely odd to me now is understanding how much that accusation
stung, and how long it stayed with me, as if it had been an eternal judgement
pronounced upon me.
Looking back, I can see that as an adult I was never
lazy. In the years when we were raising our children, and before my husband
stopped drinking, there were times when I would, once the children were in bed,
retreat to a quiet corner and read, sometimes long into the night. Hours of self
indulgence.
I understand now that those hours were necessary “me”
time. That habit of withdrawing and decompressing began as late nights of loud music
blasting while I belted out familiar songs, an exercise possible only because
of a closed den door and a soundly sleeping son and husband upstairs. I switched
to the quieter diversion of reading when there were three children, and a fervent
desire not to wake them.
These days I have my office where I can hole up,
relatively assured of solitude. Relatively because I still live with people and
this office has two doors and olds the mini fridge packed with water and diet
soda.
I also have a new chair in my bedroom. Not the old
wooden kitchen one that was there so I could have a place to sit for a few minutes
before climbing into bed. When I got my tax return this year, I treated myself
to a new, small rocker with a matching ottoman.
The chair was a bit too close to the floor for my purposes,
so David built a platform for it to sit upon. It’s much more comfortable than its
wooden predecessor, and once more gives me a private little place, behind a
closed door, where I can sit to read or just be.
Life is good
Our tomatoes and green beans have now been planted.
The plants are alive and look healthy. The bean seeds should be popping up any
day now. Our daughter purchased and then planted some large coleus, and they
are now thriving. And the rhubarb we planted last summer is also doing well. We’ll
harvest a bit more in a day or so and freeze it. And in a couple of weeks there
will be a fresh rhubarb pie on the table.
I’ve been parking my car in my newly restored
driveway. There is enough room for the car, so it fits without impeding access
to David’s new, smaller storage tent. There is a bit of a slope for me to
navigate from the car to the back walkway that ends at our yard’s gate. But it
is a very small slope, and I can manage it well. Now the only step up or down
in order to leave my house and return again is going out the back door (a step
up from the kitchen floor to the back patio) and then coming back in again. But
one step up or down is better than six or seven.
The winter will return. And when there is snow and ice
making life a challenge, the car will be parked on the street once more. I’ll
need to use those front porch steps again, and so I will. Slowly, and
carefully, but not often. I tend not to venture out when the weather is filthy.
That is a right I proudly and adamantly claim.
A right that I know I have more than earned.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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