Lately, I have had times of feeling unmotivated, unenthused, and as if there is nothing I can think of that I want to do with my time. I think this is my grief or sensory overload speaking so I’m holding it gently. Riding the bus to and from Sarah’s camp for two weeks was an interesting experience. (She loved camp and the bus ride.) While the ride itself is only half an hour, the total time for me was about two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon because of the wait times and walking at Sarah speeds and wanting to be early. The amount of construction happening is immense and so much of the ride is loud and bone-jarring and teeth-rattling. The upshot of this was that somehow I would get to the end of my days and feel like I had done absolutely nothing with my day and yet hadn’t had a moment to myself. What an odd juxtaposition. I know I was doing things and having time to myself. Amy and I had a double date at the dentist, we got groceries, and we participated in a facial recognition study at Carnegie Mellon University. If you are local and want to participate, let me know, and I can get you the information.
You go in for an hour or ninety minutes and put on various things such as Groucho Marx noses. Amy and I enjoyed our experience and then enjoyed crepes for lunch! Overall, Amy had a very good week in terms of whipped cream and berries, especially on Friday. Thursday night I made strawberry shortcake with local strawberries, and we had some berries left over on Friday morning, so Amy and I had chocolate muffins, strawberries, and whipped cream for breakfast. Then for lunch, she and I went with Carl to my new favorite restaurant, and Amy got a waffle with berries, Nutella, and whipped cream. After dinner, we had more strawberry shortcake!
What I now get, even more often than Amy gets berries and whipped cream, is hot flashes! It took me months to realize what was happening but now it is abundantly clear. It makes it very difficult to dress or sleep. I wish I could summon them on demand when I am cold. Unfortunately, this week my cluster headaches also started again, for the first time in two years. These come with a side of being too hot. As a reminder, such headaches wake me from a sound sleep and are intensely painful. I quickly got in touch with my headache doctor and asked for a Topiramate prescription. Two years ago, Topiramate was what did the trick to stop the cluster, even though it made me feel weird. The first night on Topiramate, I felt weird but got a headache. Amy was still awake, and she attended to me very sweetly. Since I was too hot, she put her cold feet on me. It really helped to not feel alone in my pain. Last night was the second night on Topiramate, and I did not get a headache! Since I sometimes get a reprieve anyway, I am not sure that I’m in the clear, but I’m tentatively hopeful. If I have managed to stop a cluster after a few days, it would truly be a miracle.
It is wonderful that Amy now has more free time so we can do more family activities. We played Peanuts Bingo yesterday, and Amy was an energetic announcer, as if at an auction. Sarah was delighted and brought her own energy. Carl followed suit, and bless their hearts they didn’t fault me for being low-energy blah.
I knew Father’s Day would be different this year. It’s the first year in ages that I haven’t written cards for my dad and stepfather. I keep reminding myself that there is nothing stopping me from writing cards to them even if I don’t know where to mail them anymore. What I didn’t expect was the grief that didn’t give me a choice on Friday evening and Saturday. I have always liked to get my assignments done early, so maybe that’s what I was doing. I felt like I was getting the news all over again that my dad was gone, and it was really untenable. Knowing that both of my homes are down by one is new water to swim in, and most of the time I can focus on my own home that hasn’t changed, but Father’s Day puts the change front and center in an un-ignorable way.
Today Carl is at a rowing race so we celebrated Father’s Day yesterday. I feel extremely lucky that somehow the way we celebrate Mother’s Day is by Carl making all of the food, and the way we celebrate Father’s Day is by Carl making all of the food! He did all of the quintessentially fatherly things. He made pancakes. He grilled. He used a weed whacker. He used a chain-saw to cut a tree that had fallen. We went on a hike in the woods. It was a good day! We are so lucky to have him and his essential Carl-ness, with his humor, creativity, patience, ability to fix lots of things, cooking, unflappability, and desire to try new things.
May you have time and space for whatever feelings are wanting to be felt.
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