Tuesday 24 April I learned that I had to immediately focus on weight, diet, sugar, and exercise or else I’d die sooner rather than later. I was depressed and terrified for a day or two. But, really, there are some good parts to this.
ACT ONE
Act I of my life was that I was born, I grew up, went to school, did stuff, got married, raised a couple of great kids. Act I was over about the turn of the century.
INTERMISSION
Around 1999-2001 the curtain rose on Act I, and the lights went up for intermission. Here’s what I mean by intermission: nothing further happened. Imagine frozen. Imagine deer in headlights; beached whale unable to turn over on deserted beach; drowning victim hoping someone else will save her; person trapped under large boulder; sleepwalker stuck in dreamscape; bug on back; dissociation; uncontrolled spending and consumption and eating; imagine the loneliness when all the actors from Act I leave the stage except me. Dramatic enough?
Details: Between 1999 and 2006, the following occurred:
I passed 50 years old.
Both kids left home.
My husband and I passed through a marital crisis.
My mother died after a long illness and I still miss her.
My brother died after a long illness and I still miss him.
My sister had two different kinds of cancer and I still worry about her.
My father passed 80 years old and moved to the end of the block.
No one is left at my childhood home.
DIGRESSION: This isn’t any old childhood home. It’s beautiful, historic, it’s the site of a famous 1858 murder, it has fields, flowers, barns, it had a pool, my brother & sister & I all got married there, my mother & brother died there, it has a spring and a spring house, and I feel about it the way I imagine native Americans feel about sacred ground. Here’s a picture:
Many Happy Returns 