Autumn Journal

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Primary Day in Michigan and it is my father's birthday.  I will vote and I will think about my father.  I have one of those ubiquitous complex relationships with my father.  I adore him and admire him and am so incredibly glad that he is mine and he makes me feel like I am twelve years old and incompetent and that I am never quite living up.  And I imagine that I will feel that way until we both are gone.

I will vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow.  There aren't a plethora of choices on the Democratic ballot in Michigan this Primary. We are being Punished for Acting Out and not Playing Nicely.  Michigan moved up the primary in order to gain some visibility in the process.  Not being a politico I don't know the ins and outs of the rules well enough to understand what all the hoopla is about, but I have to say having all the major candidates but Mrs. Clinton remove themselves from the ballot and NONE of the major candidates campaigning in Michigan really makes it seem that someone one (or many someones) has missed the whole point here.  Either the delegates and therefore the people of Michigan matter or they don't.  Seems to me the message from the entire left side of the ballot is that we don't matter.  I am not okay with that.

I took the "Choose and Candidate" quiz on NPR and I lined up exactly where I thought I would.  My closest candidate is Edwards followed closely by Clinton. 

So, I vote for Clinton tomorrow and I really hope that I am not the only Dem out at the poles in the snow tomorrow before the crack of dawn.

Now some Niquil and a shot of whiskey and I am off to sleep in hopes of beating this bug that has got a hold of me.  No insurance = no doctor and therefore this HAS to be an innocuous  cold and the fact that it is deep in my chest is  meaningless....

Growing old.....

            Growing old.....        

I spoke with my Grandmother this week.  She is 86 and blind and so very lonely.  She called to tell me that Carmen, her best friend of 65 years had died last week and she felt bad because she was feeling sorry for herself.  But that's what grief is, I think.  If we have Faith then we aren't sad for the person who has passed, we are sad for ourselves.  We are lonely and we don't have our compatriot to talk to and laugh with, we no longer have our kindred spirit to lean on - we grieve.

My momma told me that Grandma has been dreaming of a nearly bare branch with the last couple of leaves slowing falling off and twirling to the ground.

And I sat in the bath that night and cried and cried and cried.  I am not ready to let her go.  I am not ready for a world without my Grandma Hazel.  Yes, I know that I will be forty years old this year, but I am not ready.  My mother and my grandmother and my aunt have such a gift of oral storytelling.  There is a pattern and a lilt to their voices that I love more than almost any other sound.  I can listen to them tell the same story for the hundredth time and love it for the laughter and the tears and the message and the sound flowing against my ears. We are losing that.  I am a storyteller, but I tell my stories on paper, with the written word, not the spoken word.  I don't have that gift, and I don't think many of my generation do.  The oral tradition has been with us for many, many hundreds of years and we are losing it so quickly with the advent of electronic communication.  I so rarely even receive anything handwritten any more - email, not traditional old-fashioned post.

I miss it.  And I miss her before she is even gone.  I am dropping my coins in my savings jar so I can travel back out to California and see her this spring or summer, but I know there won't be many more springs or summers with her.  But who knows, maybe we have a few more years.  She may yet be a great-great-grandmother before she leaves us.  I love that thought, but I am no where near ready to be a grandmother.