Toilet Plunger

One of my prints for sale at the Craft Fair.


Eye catching heading, right?

You don't pack an old used one, right? I mean a toilet plunger is married to your toilet for life, until breakage or punctures doth part them.

And somehow you don't think of buying one before a problem strikes in any new dwelling either.

Odd that we don't think of ever knocking on anyone's door either asking to borrow a toilet plunger? I mean it's so personal, isn't it? It would be like breaking up the marriage of it and its toilet.

So the city. 24 hour shops. I'd forgotten. I can go out and get a toilet plunger at any time ($1.59).

So now my toilet and plunger are married. Tell death part them.
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Memory Lapses

Do you get weird ones?

I do.

I did my laundry early the other day and I like to sort it into drawers and shelves right away. So it's night and I knew I had washed 3 pairs of PJs and do you think I could find them? No. I checked everywhere, even trotting down the hall to the laundry room (gorgeous spot by the way with a reading nook and desk in a wee sun room off the laundry room). No sight nor sound. Checked every drawer, every shelf, every closet. No PJs. I haven't been utterly baffled in a long time, and a little frightened too. What was wrong with me? The following day I'm tossing some dirty tea towels into my laundry hamper and lo and behold, I'd gently placed the neatly folded nightwear into the dirty laundry bin. No recollection. And still don't. Maybe I should be scared?

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Adaptation

I found one of those collapsible luggage carts in a Goodwill style store. $4.99. Strong and sturdy. With my challenges in walking and carrying I've found this little unit amazing for hauling stuff around. We don't have a garbage chute and the outside garbage bins placed strategically at various points around the building is still an Everest to me. But this wee cart? It's a workhorse with the bungee cord. I've hauled out an old light knapsack for small grocery trips. And I have a well used Kipling smaller knapsack for every day use. It broke my heart to rid myself of some lovely Roots hand gear but I couldn't handle the weight of any of them so in to the Goodwill bag the went for donation. Someone will be thrilled.

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House update

I'm meeting with my agent tomorrow to drop the price again. Depressing, I know, but needs must. Someone's going to get a great bargain.
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Nota Bene

I'm a meticulous note-taker. Throw me into a meeting and I've got the "stuff" - note pad, a few varied coloured pens (partial to purple and green am I), a highlighter or two. What throws me off and brings out my inner kindergartner is when those who are not as organized ask for pages out of my notebook and borrow my pens or scratch words, with my highlighters on pages ripped from my notebook.

My note-taking all falls down in the execution of course. Because I have this ongoing fantasy that I can remember every icky bicky thing and what I'm supposed to do before the next meeting. What truly galls me are those who scribble one word notes to themselves with my gear and at the next meeting and with their to do list completed, will remind me what I had agreed to do for this one. What happened, did I forget? Of course not. Just deferred. Ahem.

You have no idea how often I'm caught unawares by this false assumption that my memory is remarkable. Well it is if you want me to recall the day I rode my first bike or the mornings I went rabbit hunting at the age of 4 with my grandfather. But last month?

There really is no further space for new files in the recesses of my brain.

I have to break down and haul out the notes and fumble over them and tick when completed.

I hope I remember to do that.

Memory

I am struck so much by memory lately. Not in a morbid way or anything, strictly reflecting on its power.

I read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" again for my book club. I loved it the first time around (2009) and the re-read was equally delightful.

I had thought in the past that it was such a shame most of us can't plumb the depths of our parents' memories. I spent a huge quantity of time (afternoon upon afternoon) with my mother when she had terminal cancer where she shared so many memories with me. I didn't take notes, much to my regret now, I thought it would embarrass her. But I could have written so much down in privacy later but it didn't occur to me caught up in my own grief and the care of my own two babies. She had fascinating memories. I'm trying to assemble them in a book. For instance, she recalled, in detail, the shock and horror of a barracks explosion in Castlemartyr, County Cork when she was a very small child. And contrary to many others, she remembered the kindness of the Black and Tans throwing her and her sisters English toffees as they rolled by her house in huge, loud trucks on their way to Youghal.

And then this line in the aforementioned book struck me:

"I am betraying you by dying, I am truly causing you to die....must we also put to death those who were still alive only through us."

And I think of living with my grandmother and grandfather for a while in that small village, and watching him, a labourer, set off for work in the morning and coming home at night with sausages in his back pocket (an enormous treat) and me helping him set the traps for the rabbits on the back acre, and tossing grain at my granny's chickens, and being kept up for all hours - don't tell yer mammy sitting on his lap while he and his pals set Ireland to rights and sang impossibly long olachons (laments) in the Sean Nos style. And one time, dancing with my granny while a fiddle and a harmonica and spoons and bones kept time. My granny was old to me then (in her late forties!)and I remember clapping my hands in glee at her agility on the flagstones.

I would be the only one remembering all of that (eldest grandchild)and I suppose, when I go, it'll be a second death for those, now long gone, who continue to live, and so very clearly, in my memory.

A Fickle Mistress

I was thinking about memory.

How reliable is it anyway?

I think of members of a family with a different viewpoint on significant events.

"Do you remember?" I say to her, "Do you remember when the baby was put in a drawer out in the back field near the boards that were put out for a dance floor, and someone, I think it was the English uncle, started playing the accordion and then someone joined him on the harmonica, we used to call them mouth organs then. I hated him teaching me to play it because he smoked and there were bits of tobacco stuck in the holes and the smell was awful."

"No, I don't remember that part," you say. "I remember the apples on the trees by the fence and Billy pushed me up a few stones that he put against them and I shook the branch and the apples fell down."

"Right," I say, "Well I don't remember that part, but boy, you got in trouble because you tore your dress and our grandmother got very upset."

"Why?" you say.

"Because she wanted us to look so good for the wedding. Auntie Rita's wedding to Uncle Pete."

"No," you say, "I don't remember a wedding at all. I remember my pale green dress that flounced and the apples. Was that at a wedding then?"

"Of course."

I am getting impatient now. "Why do you think we were all dressed up?"

"So what were you wearing then if you're so smart?"

"I can't remember."

Memory

I'm in the throes of reading the 2011 Booker prize winning book: "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes, recommended to me by one of my brothers.

It's one of those books that gets me reflecting on my own memory, how accurate is it, how much have I changed it to erase hurts or slights, or enhanced it to heighten the pleasures or deepen the sweet nostalgia. And also on the incompleteness of my life to date. Dreams left unfulfilled, days wasted. Nights too.

Friends unmade. I thought of that tonight when playing cards and I've sensed a good friend lies underneath someone I've known superficially for quite a while and I am at a loss for words as to how to make that more clear than I already have with time, seriously, running out on me. My life at least 3/4 lived, if not more.

Funny how books can do that to one. Gets your mind rambling down hitherto unknown boreens knowing the candle to light the way is flickering down to a nub. Wondering how reliable memory is, especially for a writer who tweaks the twists and turns anyway.

Thank you Julian Barnes for the brain-stretch. It is invigorating.