But now that there's a store in the offing--I can't make him sit in the back room all day. And he isn't high-functioning enough to walk around town, run errands, become a local character, beloved by all. So here we go.

I spent all day yesterday cleaning hysterically. The house was a shambles, what with us moving shelves and boxing up books for the past week. Mr. M showed up at 3:30 and sat sideways on the sofa with his forms and notebooks and talked to us pretty earnestly about the Center's available programs and services until 5 or so. Brian nodded and yessed his way through yet another interview and got lots of practice signing his name.

Today I went again to the Work Activity Center, which is located only a couple of blocks from the store. (Just about everything in town is located a couple of blocks from the store, now that I think of it.) I made an appointment for early Monday morning to go there with Brian and talk over the possibility of his participating in the day program starting in October. (I wanted to wait until November but they prefer October for obscure budgetary reasons.) Things have changed there since my last visit five years ago. The rooms were cheerful and well-lit. Several workers greeted us brightly. The clients seemed animated and happy. Two young women noticed Brian immediately. A girl with Down syndrome--chubby, freckled, with a long braid down her back and a lisp and a giggle--asked his name and said he was cute, and began a sing-song about whose boyfriend he would be.

I dunno.

Brian was clearly enthusiastic about returning, though, nodding and smiling and pointing at the floor--"Ah tay here." He was too bashful to look at the friendly young ladies, though. Or annoyed. It was hard to tell.

Hm.

In town, after emptying book-boxes at the storefront, we ran our errands: we bought a sack of oats for the llamas, and we placed the store's fictitious name statement at the local paper, and we bought some groceries and put gas in the car. Back home I fed the hungry animals while Brian unloaded the car. Then he and I took in the dry laundry from the line (he carries the basket) and then came inside and folded it. I made a big supper--spaghetti with a good Classico sauce, and sourdough toast rubbed with fresh garlic, and baby greens with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I emptied what was left in an old opened bottle of Goats do Roam South African red wine into a pretty glass and pretended it was perfect.

Now the sky is going dark. Brian's upstairs watching a movie, and I have to take Ranger for a leash-walk before locking him in his crate for the night (I hate that part, the crate). I'll start up the nighttime space heater near wherever Gunter has passed out in the greenhouse. And then the rest of us will climb up to our own sleeping places.

Big changes. A little scary. But in a good way.
7:39:23 PM    comment []  trackback []  

When I was young and stupid, I was jealous on behalf of my children (I believed; clearly I was jealous on my own behalf, as well). These relatives loved animals more than their own families, I thought bitterly. Plants, even--my mother would mail me color photos of her coleus plants, which she believed quivered in excitement whenever she returned from a few days' absence.

Nuts.

I had pets around as the kids were growing up, and I thought I loved them as animals ought to be loved--in their places. It was the children who mattered.

But you know what? The children never matter less. And the grandchildren matter more than ever.

There's this thing that happens as we age, if we are lucky, I think. It's like the story we tell to a sibling when a new baby comes into the family: Love is like a candle flame, and each new person in our lives a candle, so that the more we love the brighter the light.

It turns out this applies across species barriers. The more we love, the more we can love. And because over the years we love more and more, our "families" expand, our lives become bright indeed. No one displaces anyone. Ever.

We age, we fill with love, and it overflows. We must share it.

I had this obvious insight (again) last night when I was trying to capture a great panicking dragonfly that was beating itself against the windows. I kept calling out, "Come here, sweetheart. Come, love, it's OK, I'll put you out. Be calm." And I thought about how terms of endearment--"sweetheart," "baby," "darling"--had come to find a place in my everyday vocabulary, how I address my plants using them, and ants, and frogs no less often than my brother, my friends, my grandchildren (as I talk to them in thought).

This is something that happens. Love flows through us over time like a river broadening, and we can't help ourselves. It leaks out everywhere.

I understand the issues of power and mistrust bound up in all this, especially with regard to love's expression in women. When we are lucky enough to share our lives with a generous partner, this phenomenon can mean a glorious blossoming in later life. Sometimes the partners we choose want to keep all our love to themselves, and if we are not strong enough to express it in spite of our lovers' disapproval we can feel pinched, limited, unable to flower this way until we are alone. Sometimes the need to express it is what drives us out of such limiting partnerships. I know generous, warmhearted males who have expanded their later lives in similar ways.

We certainly, joyfully, count our fellow humans among our beloveds. Often, though, this love goes unaccepted or unbelieved, and I think maybe some of us recoil from people a little for this reason. We become cautious in expressing what we feel. But it must be expressed somewhere, and the creatures around us give us a place to go with it, keep the impulse alive, strengthen it inside our hearts.
11:50:42 AM    comment []  trackback []