Wonder of Wonders
Sun., September 5, 06:19 PM
There’s always something good with something, um, not so good. Husband is out of the hospital, but he was placed in a nursing home rather than being allowed to come straight home. They found him a nice place, within ten miles of here, so that I can manage to get there, even if I am “driving-challenged.” Not only can he take a couple of weeks to stabilize, but they will – we hope – teach him to deal with his new constraints, including the everlasting oxygen.
Meanwhile Son and I have been trying to prepare his room for him. Ever since I moved out of that room, he has been collecting more stuff than before, and just piling it around himself. Any of my possessions that are still there have been buried for years. The wobbly piles of videotapes (he must have recorded hundreds of hours) are a clear and present danger.
Clearing away the rubble – Son disposed of his cigarettes – is kind of like an archaeological dig. After two weekends and a couple of dozen trash bags, we have begun to find treasures I had long since described as lost. Photos (but not yet the few snapshots of Husband’s mother). Newspaper clippings. Clothing, including new shirts and trousers I had bought for him, which he never wore. There is also, of course, some of my clothing: the size ten dresses and size 5 high-heeled shoes from another lifetime.
I found lots of articles about Sandy Koufax, though I still haven’t found the ticket stubs I mentioned. And all those Time magazine articles I was going to annotate. (Little did I know, back in the day, that my ranting would take a different form.)
Wonder of wonders, there was a shoebox underneath what used to be my desk. Could it be? It was! If you read about my song project, you might remember that I couldn’t find my shoebox full of index cards, the ones with all the lyrics I had collected. It’s dusty, it’s grimy, it’s full of smoke and cobwebs but, son of gun, there it is! I’ll be entering data for months, but I’ll be having a wonderful time. You can’t imagine how thrilled I am.
