While Visions of Integrals Danced In My Head

Homework!

This afternoon I go in to take the fourth Calculus 1 test of the semester.  The first three went well.  I am bragging, but I do have an A average in the class so far.  This one isn't any different, really--but it is.  It is kind of like Christmas when I was a kid.  

I took a series of black and white photos like these to overlay when I was in a Photography I class.  We learned how to develop our own film and printed our own photos from the negatives.  When I tried to add photos to this entry, this came up as an option.  I don't now why it is continually running--but with these 8 or 9 photos it looks kind of cool.

Once upon a time, I lived in a place where colour TV was a big deal; mobil phones, Post-It notes, and velcro hadn't even been invented; computers were just a gleam in Steve Job's eye; I actually used a slide rule for math; Autism, depression, and indecision were were shameful things no one talked about; and AIDS hadn't been discovered yet. I was 11 years old--and didn't even know to wonder what life would be like when I was 55.    

I hated school.  Our family moved, on the average, every two years and so I was always the "new kid."  On my first day of class in one school, I sat in the "most popular" girl's chair by mistake. The other kids told me I'd better move or she would beat me up.  (I knew she wouldn't--because I moved before she arrived in class and she turned out to be a nice person, though she never knew who I was.)  In another school, when it was discovered that I liked a certain boy, he sat behind me and whispered mean things about my clothes and my shoes while the teacher presented the lesson.  

Kind of a geometric image.

I was luckier than most kids in my position, though, because I was smart, good in school, and the teachers would talk to me like a person.  I also lived in a dream world--floating above myself and looking down on the events of every day.  I was forced to be an actor at the mercy of the kids around me, but I was also safely ensconced in the audience--distant and safe in the balcony section.

Watching myself.

Through these years, Christmas was a shining moment--wonderful because there was no school, and exciting because even though I knew there was no Santa for real, he still existed for my younger brothers and sisters.   I loved being home--it was a safe place for both my body and my spirit.  At Christmas, though, the uncertainty of Christmas morning put me on edge.  I knew that no matter what I got, I would be disappointed.  Nothing real could match the fantasy of my undefinable hopes.        

Essentially, I didn't know what I wanted and so no matter what I received, it could never be right.  

The agony of that hazy expectation is much like what I am feeling this morning.

More homework!

I know that I will make mistakes on the test, but I don't know what they will be.  I prepare and practice, but I am not sure what I should spend my last few hours reviewing.  

It is an amazing mix of dread, excitement and wonder that I could be learning a way of thinking that lets me measure the area of shapes with curved surfaces and discover how fast an object is falling at any specific point in time.  I am not studying "math," but a way of describing the world around me by using symbols and relationships between numbers.  

After walking through the Ft Lauderdale Temple, training for Open House tour guide.
April 2014

It is like the moment when I discovered that I could "write" a circle with letters and numbers.  Studying math is like studying a new language that attempts to capture the vastness of space, and also the unseeable movement of electrons.  

It is magic--except it is real.

This is Fred. I write about him at the very last of my entry for today. He is big and noisy and Brent is helping him to learn some manners.
When everyone was here for Christmas, I got us all together and snapped a photo. I am really wishing now that I had gotten a professional to come in. This one gets all of our faces, but it looks really, really dumb. Especially me.
This photo, on the other hand, is a wonderful, wonderful memory of Brent and me a year ago when we went to visit Megan and Anton when Jon was born. I had forgotten that I even had it. I like it so much that I am going to print it off--along with the photo below--and send it to Brent for his office. I know that he doesn't like the one that he has there now--it is tucked away in a funny corner wall of his office. I will make this one HUGE so that everyone can see how handsome he is and how perfect we are together.
Earlier tonight, about 5 pm, I spoke with Brent while he was still at work. Then I took the bunnies with me on the porch and moved all of the plants out of the huddle that had protected them from the freezing temperatures we had last week. It was like I was stretching my own legs out and reaching my face up to the sky to feel the sun. I transplanted some new babies and gave just about everyone some new soil. I'll fertilize more later, when the plants have had a chance to settle down. A few days ago, I visited Lowe's garden section (after two nights of below freezing temperatures) and found these dainty, perfectly proportioned miniature roses. There were also some bougainvillea with blossoms that were a water colour mix of orchid pink and nectarine orange. Nice plants, yes. BUT the most amazing part of the whole experience was that when I saw them, I realized that THEY had SURVIVED the FREEZE OUT DOORS AT LOWE'S!!!

So, I now have some bougainvillea (isn't that a wonderful word to spell???) in odd places about my yard and some tea roses in clusters of pots around the lanai.

Tonight I was filling some pots and with soil from the bottom pan of the small "hot house" that Brent fashioned for me--and with each handful of dirt, I kept scooping up these fat, lethargic earthworms. The soil had been dry, but deep enough to keep them from freezing or dehydrating. I picked them up and held each one in my hand--and each one began to move around! It was like a miracle. I know that it wasn't, but it felt that way. And I know that they are only earthworms--but they are earthworms that squirm among the roots of my newest plants and help them to grow--so they are MY earthworms. After placing each worm in a pot of soil, I gave each some water and watched them burrow down below the surface.

After spending New Year's with my own children and my grandson, I've been feeling very old and kind of dried up. The cold has kept me in and I didn't cover one of my favorite plants in the front yard well enough--so it is now limp and, well, dead. The rabbits run around and frisk me for treats and come for pats when they are feeling mellow. I feed the cat and let her in when she scratches at the glass doors on the porch. My son has me do Chemistry and History and Math with him. My husband lets me get him something to eat when he comes home at 9:30 at night after 14 hours of a day trying to help to fix a HUGE, but ACCIDENTAL, mistake someone else made. I do a lot of motions that have to do with a lot of people around me, but, mostly, I am not all that essential to the lives of those who live around me.

I did save some earthworms today, though, and that makes me like myself a bit better than I would have otherwise.

Felicia is in town showing her stallion at the horse shows going on over the next few weeks in Wellington--about a 30 minute drive from my house. She still cares for my own Agraciada who lives with her in Texas. I hope that we can spend some time together while she is here. It will give me another chance to connect with a person and with memories that are important to me.

Megan and I made cards while she was here--she sends lots of them out to lots of people who need her care and support where she lives in Maryland. I made a lot of them, too, but I don't really have people who need me like she is needed. Both Meg and Lauren are amazing people. I hear about and watch them go about their business and remember that I used to be that busy and ernest and focused and dedicated. Now, I think that I am mostly tired.

That is allowed me, though. Brent took me to the walk-in clinic here and they put me on antibiotics and some steroid breathing therapy. After a week of coughing and grouching and feeling itchy and hollow inside, I find out that I have the equivalent of walking pneumonia. So. We have a three day weekend and I have lots of time to sleep and muffle about the house while Brent works on our newest baby: Fred.

The Grand Cherokee is dying: the bearings are going out, so Brent bought a huge "mudder" Jeep. His heart is 1976 and most of his body is 1990. He is a golden pumpkin bronze and has 33 inch tires.

So Brent works on civilizing Fred so that I can drive him while I sleep and cough and snort and wheeze--and admire Brent's work and order the parts that Brent needs on-line.

It is late now. Brent is asleep, breathing quietly, while I finish this. Happy New Year. It's OK to be tired and old every now and again . . . especially when Brent is fixing up a new Jeep for us to drive when I feel better and have energy and am young again.

!!!!!

Post Christmas WOW!

I was in the middle of absolutely nothing about a week ago and I was thinking about how marvelous something was and that I needed to write about it. It had something to do with my body or Christmas or my new computer . . . I think. Anyway.

We had both sets of missionaries come for dinner yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. This means:

1. I cooked a fabulous, diverse dinner menu

2. The rabbits pretty much got ignored

3. The house is still spotless--because Brent will not have a dirty house when company is coming.

This cleaning thing is one of the most obvious differences between him and me. I was looking through a pile of photos taken earlier this year. In two of them, my Visiting Teacher is vacuuming my living room. Now this is a young mother with five young children, a very big home and yard, and a husband who has a demanding job and a Church calling that keeps him away from home way too many evenings every week. Jen Shultz, though, came and we folded laundry together. Then, we walked through the house just talking. She spotted my vacuum sitting in a corner of the room and asked me if I would mind if she vacuumed my house. Thoroughly non-plussed by a request that would have completely embarrassed my sweet husband, I happily agreed to her offer.

Brent is the person who cleans our hotel room before they come to make the beds and change the towels--so that housekeeping won't think that we are messy. I am a person who figures that these talented women (for they usually are women) have magically been provided to take care of me--and I am more than happy to leave the room the way it is so that they are free to do what they will. When I see a hotel cleaning person in the hallway, I try to waylay them for a moment so that I can thank them for taking care of me and my family. Brent would rather die than be in the hotel room when a hotel worker brings us extra towels. (OK--that is a way big exaggeration--but you understand my point?)

More about Jennifer. She ran marathons, ran her children back and forth to activities and school, played the piano for Primary and taught her children to play a three-person-six-hands-triplet (?) for an informal piano recital with friends. She has had 5 children--her oldest is now about 10 years old. I admire Jen very much and am so very blessed that she counts me among her friends.

I have vague memories of such energy and spirit in my earlier existence--half a life ago. I am slow--way slower--now. Falling off of horses too many times, dancing ballet and doing gymnastics (a whole lifetime ago), increasing deafness in my hearing, manic depression, arthritis, narcolepsy, sleep depravation, a flood, a hurricane, tornados, two operations to replace my lower left thumb joint and three major attempts to re-build my right shoulder, three pregnancies and the anguish of giving birth, my mother's death, weeks when I could not sleep and months when I slept for 22 hours a day--and months when I couldn't leave my bedroom--have worn my body and my desire to learn patience very much out. Unlike some people who say that their high school years or their missions were the best times of their lives, I consciously try to tuck the things that happened before yesterday most snuggly into their far corners of my mind.

Of course, there are other events in my life that I often pull forward to replay again and again: the moment that I said "Yes." to the question of whether I would marry Brent, flying over fences and fields on horseback, flying through the steps of a ballet exercise and jumping into the air--so close to flying, laying on the hot sand of a beach and hearing the waves softly "fuesh . . . fuesh" nearby, reading wonderful books, giving talks and speeches and teaching, singing in front of others, playing the piano, playing my flute with mom a long time ago, singing to myself as I pull up weeds, dancing to the radio when no one was around to see me, having Brent curl me up on his lap and hearing his sweet tenor voice in my ear. learning how to tease bits of plants into growing into very tall and beautiful versions of their parents, the instant before I fall into sleep with Brent's even breathing as a lullaby. Even some of the painful parts I return to--the thumb, the shoulder--have elements that I return to. I treasure the moment when I realized that I would be completely able to use my left hand again--and the sweet self-revelation that I could lift my arm to lead the music or climb to the tops of trees without pain or weakness. My children are all an essential, joyful part of each of my days--though they brought searing pain with their arrival, they have returned excitement and wonder far beyond their purchase price.

My word. I am sounding maudlin tonight.

This January I will be taking a math class and an elementary photography class--black and white film and learning to process the pictures we capture. I discovered today that the junior college also teaches flying lessons and offers preparation classes for certification in both small planes and helicopters. I have also looked into the county's Master Gardener certification program. And I have a new computer and a new camera and time to visit my sisters, brothers, my father and Cindy. Tonight we bought a Jeep Wrangler--tricked out for mudding--which means that it is pretty much useless for street transportation. I am glad that Brent knows the process for getting it into the shape and that he will let me help where I can. It will be a new, intoxicating adventure.

And I am learning how to weld!!!!!

Every day there are the common, routine things. There is still laundry and dishes--though Nate pitches in and pretty much takes care of the kitchen. I am still full time tutor for him--but I like that part of our relationship. We are becoming better and better friends. He is trying to teach me how to play Mario Brothers on our Wii. Tonight he ended up carrying me a good chunk of the time so that I didn't keep dying. He tells me which moves I should make when we make chess so that I can beat him--and he just came in to ask if I wanted dinner--he will call me when it is done.

It bothers me that I don't have the same athletic body I did twenty years ago and I hate that I have to keep constantly aware to guard against the manic or the depression that a med failure allows. BUT I love that I am a size 6 and that I have a pool table and a very old baby grand piano in my living room instead of a couch and two end tables with lamps. I especially love that Brent thinks that I am beautiful and talented and wonderful and that I could never do anything that would push him away from me. I love that I have my own "nesting area" where it is OK for me to keep things in a relative chaos and where I am comfortable and can be creative. I love that I have a pool and a huge yard and three bunnies that I can push around in a pet stroller when I go for a walk with Brent in the evening.

I'm still not all that excited about being short. The absent minded thing can be a real inconvenience, too.

I am excited about Meg and La coming in a week and about Brent sitting with me on the couch later on while we watch The Big Bang or a Netflix movie. I love that I can dress up or wear my grubby garden clothes--and that Brent thinks that I am incredible no matter how I look.

New year's resolutions? Definitely not to petition, or to practice, patience. I know I would like to find more time to spend with Brent--just being with him--and more time with the Lord--just listening to Him. Two good ones to start with.