Aphasia is simply a fact of life for me and has been so since I was about 27, and I forgot how to read. When you're a PhD candidate, this is not a good thing. Not at all. My life as I knew it was over, and I had no choice but to do differently.
Ever since, I forget easily. I turn my back, walk away, and it's like something has never been. This can be a problem when it comes to things like laundry left in the washer or dirty dishes waiting in the sink. I've even walked away in the middle of a meal without realizing I had do so. I'm not ignoring things. I've forgotten, quite literally, that they were even there. It's more than a bit frustrating to find a proverbial trail of breadcrumbs from the unfinished duties of my days. But there they are. And I have to be honest enough to say that this sort of situation will remain unchanged as long as I am here on this planet. Eventually stuff gets done. (This is no complaint; merely an explanation--what I deal with on a daily basis is something most folks never have to know personally, and thank goodness for that.)
But sometimes there's joy in forgetting and finding again. And this morning it made me laugh.
I should explain first that I've been plagued by the dustiness of my bedroom. It's autumn; that's when I clean house. Now I know that spring is the traditional time for cleaning but I believe that tradition is rooted in Northern climes where dust and detrious collects during the winter months while the house is shut up to keep the heat IN. Here in the Deep South, especially here in South Mississippi, we have little winter (perhaps six weeks) and a great deal of summer (about nine months). So it is autumn when I want to push the summer's accumulation out the door because the house has been shut so long to keep the heat OUT. It makes sense when you think about it. Plus autumn cleaning prepares home for the holidays.
A week or so ago, I gave the bedroom a good going-over with a damp dustcloth, from the ceiling fan down. Picture frames, door frames, all those fiddly little edges that antique furniture tends to have, all the little bits and pieces that I enjoy displaying on every available surface.....as I've said before, I'm no minimalist. I like stuff. Lots of stuff. It makes me happy.
The problem was that I ran out of energy before I ran out of places that wanted dusting and, recovering as I still am from walking pneumonia, the rest of the cleaning had to wait. This morning I didn't want to wait anymore--the dust bunnies in the corners and under the bed were showing their teeth.
The bedroom is small-ish (about 9 X 10.5) and this house is very short on storage so the space under the bed serves as a prime place to keep boxes full of sheets and blankets and curtains. The boxes I keep under my antique cast iron bed (the base of which is fully a foot off the floor and thus offers excellent space for storage) really haven't varied for twenty years or so, and that's the only reason I recall what is in them. That's why I was surprised this morning to find more than 4 plastic bins under the bed. There was also an opaque tote of some sort--big and quite heavy.....but what was it? I didn't have any idea and certainly no memory of having placed it under the bed.
I peered inside. Green, the sort of avocado green that was popular back in the 1960's. That's nice; I like avocado green. Satin. Also nice; I've always loved satin stuff. Brocade embroidery of delicate wispy leaves in deep gold; very pretty and something else I adore. But what was this green thing exactly? I had no idea. And then light finally dawned when I fully opened the container: it was an eiderdown! A truly vintage German eiderdown! It was the real deal, not like those new "down" blankets that are just tolerable and not really warm. This was meant to be weighty and wonderfully warm for winter.
When I helped my German-born friend pack up her house last year prior to her move to Alabama, she was down-sizing seriously to move into a single room in her daughter's home. Eiderdowns require space to store, and she knew her square footage would be severely limited. Her family, she said, wouldn't be interested and wouldn't value it, so she gave that precious heirloom Eiderdown to me. And I promised to keep it safe. Well, I have kept it safe.....but I also forgot it. And that's why it made me laugh out loud for joy this morning. I'll be using that Eiderdown this short winter.
Friendship keeps us warm in more ways than one.
Life is good.
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