Growth ... and evidentiary change ... achieving excellent purchase ...

… see below, that pile of dishes … yesterday, i did them (and many other things) using both hands!  

last week, i was still sad over the fact that it was still painstakingly slow to write with a pen, crochet or do any such little handiwork, so i started a bullet journal to feed my soul and my need to be doing something on paper (or with paper), but something that didn’t involve flat-out longhand for pages and pages.

... but i digress ... let's get back to this picture(s) so i can document that i'm actually GETTING SOMEWHERE!

in the background of the picture above, you can see my mother.  she had over yesterday (Friday) for lunch, wherein i brewed her strong coffee and then made cornbread biscuits and goulash.

yesterday morning had started out with some "Grandma and Me" time, Me and Scarlet Rae, since she had spent the night prior, after a school event.  then mid morning i started in on some "Mom and Me" time with my mother.  At the noon hour, it became "Grandmother, Mother and Me" with Mom, Me and Carol.  Off she went, and Mom and I had some more "Mom and Me" time.  Off she went, at the end of the afternoon and i finished up the day with more "Mom and Me" time, this time me and Carol at the nail salon!

 ... moms and me time ...

and here now ... 

... and again, this is my mother.  i’d like you to meet my mother, really, really meet my mom, just as i am now meeting and greeting her myself (this last three years, but more so this last many months).

  here (here, in the here and now).

 

here, now (Friday), she’s sitting in my officeartroomsanitarium, where we had also been hanging out earlier in the day, where we have spent some pretty good times this past several months, and where i spend a fair (MASSIVE) amount of time by myself, where i vegetate, work, create (and feel the most safe) ... sitting here yesterday afternoon she said to me“i like this room.” 

"she really likes me, she really likes me!"

"... the first time i didn't feel it.  the first time i didn't feel it, but this time i feel it, and i can't deny the fact that you like me, right now!  you like me!"  -Sally Field

love and respect.

"When I stopped seeing my mother through the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself." - Nancy Friday

i give you, again and again, my mother.  i take kindly to and am kind to this mother.

Mom and Dad, Jamie in the highchair and me, under the blue smock, my arrival pending. 

we became this family, eventually, "the Family Circle."

***

i hold in my heart now, my dad, and i think he'd be proud of how far my mother and i have come.  he saw the very start of this three years ago, but we have to finish it without him.  we can do this, Dad!

... oh, the saving, the graces … the change in all the other places … 

***

... and, as i said, last week (2 months post CMC joint replacement in my right hand) i was pushing forward, yet still having days where i felt like i was going backwards, which has been the ying-and-the yang of the recovery process wherein it feels good one day, but hits a shit storm or a roadblock the next, and then OMG, OMG, we’re all going to die, why did i do this?!?!??! [and anxiety over such things is, yes, like that previous run-on sentence] 

the willies and the worriment comes in scattered bursts.  there's the feeling good, the feeling bad, and then there's the feeling bad because it feels so good, followed by feeling so good it hurts.

i'm grieving, i'm healing, i'm healing, i'm grieving.

 this last few weeks (since cast and brace removal) i've met each new dawn, sliding in and out of my pjs into clothes with actual zippers and buttons.  i've made the bed (heavy quilts) and pulled wide the curtains, letting in the sun (and sometimes the gloom and the rain).  i managed the ability to brush my teeth and hair with my right hand (finally, versus clumsy left), could almost pick up my coffee cup (and other things) without using just the left or (in the very least) both hands. 

i made more and spilled less.  

i've been able to get back to the real work and the real play, with great care (still no lifting, punching, clenching or pinching with aggression, but my hands fly all over home row, to infinity and beyond!).

i've worked on my fine motor skills, holding a pen, or a pen knife, trying to hack things out on the page and otherwise, though the bulk of this remained an act of sheer will and perseverance, as well as learning to take my half-assed efforts as the best that could be done.

after every task, i had to rest a bit (the "good" hand and the still steroid-filled "bad" hand), waiting to feel like i was "powered up" again.

in this meantime/mean time, i started my version of Julia Cameron's "morning pages," from the book the Artist's Way ... i call my version, "mourning pages," and i try not to stress over the fact that i may not be writing, every morning--or even every day--and that it's unlikely i'll make the prescribed three-page mark just quite yet.

as i mentioned at the beginning of this post (and in a prior post), i also began a "bullet journal" which helps take the pain and pressure off the fact that writing long-handed wordy journal entries is a deliberate and gradual (barely a page) process.  

in some ways, however, the fact that my pen is only going 15 slow-moving-vehicle-miles-per-hour in these notebooks has given me new and needed perspective on things.

while my words, in some sense, feel like they're being reined in and choked back, they are in fact going gangbusters.

this may not be at my usual clip, the preferred manic rate that my brain and heart mechanics usually try to process thoughts, but it's a far less pressured stride, and i'm learning to live with this (and learn from it).

so with thoughts and feelings properly in their places, let us fast-forward to this week (how it began and how it ended with so many new beginnings).

in the very beginning of the week, some of the "OMG, OMG, we're all going to die" feelings changed to "OMG, OMG, the magical power of healing," evidenced by the fact that every day this week, i got up, again and again, made that bed, threw wide those curtains, got dressed, pulled up the zipper on my jeans with zeal, worked those buttons, brushed my hair and my teeth, spread butter on and cut my own toast, worked (nearly back to my usual number of hours, pages and content), played with yarn, tweaked things around the house, clipped/potted and played with plants, drove through town (both hand on the steering wheel!), had my hair and nails done, saw the doctor, picked up medications (key, lol) and brought in some groceries (all without taking frequent breaks).

… and, yes, by Friday morning, my knife skills (rough chopping, anyway) were back and i cut and chopped and made ready a meal for my mama’s visit. 

(lower right/photo credit/http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/)

So, my right hand is healing and i haven’t cut off my nose to spite my face, what with all the returning knife skills.

i am, i must say, in full “NESTING” mode and pre-surgery (the left hand) prep, thrilled to have the nearly full and far less painful use of the right hand, to help me get a few more things done before the next surgery and before the steroids in my left hand wear thin 

master bedroom redo - we are halfway there.

as my title going in says, "growth, and evidentiary change."  

i'm seeing it (and feeling it), each and every day now, where in the past, yes, i had my struggles.

drawing by Carol - very preK

but i'm mending, well on my way to the state of “excellent purchase” as surgeons are wont to say, proving that all the jagged edges eventually can be stitched back together again, into something i can use.

things get better and better with each passing day.

my orthopedic orthopedic followup doc tells me, “good, good, you’re massaging your scars.  things look good.  massaging those scars is key …”

were i to have my head and heart split open, i think a neurologist and cardiologist would say the same, "you're healing, i'm seeing excellent purchase.”

in another, very different office visit this week, i said, "yes, yes, but i'm still scared ... i don't always trust [this, that and the bloody other]."

to which i was given a head nod and an "of course, you don't ... not yet ..."

… nine months from now (the very same time it takes to have a baby), i'll be on the nearly totally healed side (when it comes to my hands, but also my head and most importantly ... my heart).  a year from now (so says my surgeon), it will feel like i was never broken.

... by Mary Cassatt ... sketching it out ... 

... meet me ... and meet my mother = mother and daughter, becoming one, in and of our own (very distinct) selves.  together for the rest of this long run ... 

meet me ... meet my mother ... my mother and me.

"The older I get the more of my mother I see in myself." -Nancy Friday

***

... i was born in the early 60s ... this book, My Mother Myself," read in the latter 70s (brooding bitch that i was) ... and this, these days, are NOW!

you heard me, i'm HEALING!

i’m healing and with "excellent purchase.”

***