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Observations
Feb. 22nd, 2019 12:40 pmI woke this morning to wind rattling the windows and gusting through the cedars that overhang the house. And now it's snowing like fury out there--falling thick and fast and swirling in otherwise unseen eddies of wind.
And the ambulance just took our across-the-street neighbor to Hospice. The neighbor who took months of careful measurements and notes and evaluations to decide to buy the house. Who set about remodeling to her own specs and standards, who pulled down the back shed, grown in stages, like Topsy, cleared the debris and erected a solid, square and plumb foundation and a new shed on that spot. Who insulated and drywalled and polycoated the rafters and beams on the inside, and installed a treadmill and a stationary bike. Who recruited a student worker to help her clear the lot around the foundation of the house, lay gravel and paving stones--by hand. Who hired someone to build a porch, somewhere to sit outside and read in nice weather, that someone who wandered away, unpaid, abandoning his tools.
OH took a look at the dangerously shoddy job left undone and volunteered to build it, and spent the summer doing just that.
She had lived in PNW and Canada--standing just under 5' and retaining a slight lilt of Irish accent, she was of liberal opinion and speech. After doing all her dilligence on buying the house, she found herself nested between two staunch fundamentalist tea partiers, both hard of hearing, who in warmer months of open windows, blasted Rush Limbaugh and his ilk from waking to sleeping. She was not amused.
She had played on an Irish hurling team, and one of her fondest memories was traveling to a meet in NYC by subway and seeing the other passengers expressions as this team of Amazons of variegated size and shape boarded the train, sticks in hand. She has a shelf full of golf trophies, and she and her foursome would drive to Canada, play their 18 holes, have lunch, and return before the local course would have found space in their schedule for the ladies to play.
Having noted the frequent whimsical fencing made up of discarded single skis, she made her own garden fence of hockey and hurling sticks. Her latest project before she became ill was to build a ramp beside her back steps so her disabled friends could come visit, and to pave the dirt floor of her carport with concrete patio slabs bedded in pea gravel. Those tasks won't be finished, now.
She was driving her little red car less than a month ago. Whatever's taking her moved swiftly, and left little time for goodbyes. Little but fierce, and forever remembered.
And the ambulance just took our across-the-street neighbor to Hospice. The neighbor who took months of careful measurements and notes and evaluations to decide to buy the house. Who set about remodeling to her own specs and standards, who pulled down the back shed, grown in stages, like Topsy, cleared the debris and erected a solid, square and plumb foundation and a new shed on that spot. Who insulated and drywalled and polycoated the rafters and beams on the inside, and installed a treadmill and a stationary bike. Who recruited a student worker to help her clear the lot around the foundation of the house, lay gravel and paving stones--by hand. Who hired someone to build a porch, somewhere to sit outside and read in nice weather, that someone who wandered away, unpaid, abandoning his tools.
OH took a look at the dangerously shoddy job left undone and volunteered to build it, and spent the summer doing just that.
She had lived in PNW and Canada--standing just under 5' and retaining a slight lilt of Irish accent, she was of liberal opinion and speech. After doing all her dilligence on buying the house, she found herself nested between two staunch fundamentalist tea partiers, both hard of hearing, who in warmer months of open windows, blasted Rush Limbaugh and his ilk from waking to sleeping. She was not amused.
She had played on an Irish hurling team, and one of her fondest memories was traveling to a meet in NYC by subway and seeing the other passengers expressions as this team of Amazons of variegated size and shape boarded the train, sticks in hand. She has a shelf full of golf trophies, and she and her foursome would drive to Canada, play their 18 holes, have lunch, and return before the local course would have found space in their schedule for the ladies to play.
Having noted the frequent whimsical fencing made up of discarded single skis, she made her own garden fence of hockey and hurling sticks. Her latest project before she became ill was to build a ramp beside her back steps so her disabled friends could come visit, and to pave the dirt floor of her carport with concrete patio slabs bedded in pea gravel. Those tasks won't be finished, now.
She was driving her little red car less than a month ago. Whatever's taking her moved swiftly, and left little time for goodbyes. Little but fierce, and forever remembered.
