#13 Dreaming of Love

Well, it had been 5 months and I was starting to learn how to be at one with one, me. At the time, my mom was recovering from surgery in rehab. She was finally alert too, so I went back to Tennessee to recover my own self. Since I was limited on money I had to find ways to be my own, cheap date. Then it occurred to me, Red Box! For the first time since my move I decided to rent a movie. A dollar wasn't too much to spend for 2 hours of entertainment. As I continued to be my own best friend, I started doing things like, going on artist's dates. Something that was an activity out of a book I had purchased many years ago, The Artist's Way. Since then, I've always tried to use it at various times of my life to make progress in the areas of art and life.

Back in 1993, I had a dream that changed my life up to this date. I dreamt about artwork that I had made in the dream and when I woke up I tried to recreate the art that I had seen. (See "The First Piece" http://clothsculptures.blogspot.com/2011/02/first-piece.html ) Painting, music, dance, photography, theater, and writing had all been important to me while growing up. All one had to do was look at my old high school year books and the evidence was there. Sports was also important to me. My father who was a P.E. professor at a state college while I was growing up was also a college football coach. But because of my parent's divorce, I grew up in Upstate New York while he was in California. I had always joked with my mother that if I had been a boy I would have played football. So I did the next best thing, I participated in sports, period. Over my high school years I played volleyball and track, plus I threw in a little choreography for the gymnastics team and even became a basketball cheerleader one year. I may have even been the first black cheerleader at my school, but don't quote me on that. But I digress, back to the events of 2011. Because of my love of art, part of my new environment needed to reflect that especially since I was still creating cloth sculptures. So, I turned one of the rooms into a den/studio.

It was on March 30, 2011 that I had 2 dreams that made a ripple in my world again. The first one was about an embrace while watching TV. The person was hugging me from behind as we lay stretched out on a couch. There was a closeness, a warmth, a comfort enveloping me. It had the same feeling I get when I've entered into high praise and worship, the very glow of God surrounding me. What a powerful feeling! I still have it as if it were a memory, my mind not recognizing it as a dream but as a waking memory to be recalled upon and relived. I woke up reflecting on the dream and not much later, I fell back to sleep and had a second dream with the same person who had hugged me in the first dream. In the second dream, the person was in pain and I helped him. But I remember very clearly that I had to ask him if I could enter the room where he was at in order to help. When I awoke from the second dream. Three things were important here, #1 I had never awakened from a dream and had the same person in the next dream, #2 the experiences in the dreams were as if they were real not like regular dreams vague and sketchy, and #3 I knew the person in my dreams. It was someone I had not spoken to or seen in over 10 years.

The other thing about this person was, it was someone that I had never dated before. I had never so much as had more than a side church-like hug from this person. I had first met him about 30 years ago and saw him from time to time out in the community. My thoughts were, why would someone I knew only slightly and had never meditated on, be in a dream of mine in such a personal way? And why would he be in two dreams in one night? I found a way to contact him since my normal practice was to contact people when they randomly appeared in my dreams. I also always wanted to check on their physically and spiritually well-being. Thankfully he was doing well. He had however, experienced a major surgery within the last 3 months but he was doing well. But he couldn't get over why all of a sudden out of the blue I had sought him out. Prior we had never spoken over the phone before. Up till then all there was, were 5 minute updates on how we were doing since the last we had run into each other in a parking lot or hallway. And he kept on being persistent, pressing the issue of why all of a sudden did I contact him? But I was embarrassed. I didn't want to tell him, "Hey, you were in my dream and we were in love!"

To Be Continued...

2 as 1 - Unique Cloth Sculpture by JaMax

The Sun, The Son - Unique Cloth Sculpture by JaMax  

#12 Busted!

Since my arrival, my mother's health had been pretty good. Even though she was no longer in remission, she kept our attitudes up instead of us needing to help keep her spirits raised. It was in the afternoon in March 2011, when I got the call that my mother was being admitted into the hospital. I packed light and was in the car scheduled to be there by 8:00pm. That was the beauty of being 4 hours away in Tennessee verses living in California, so very far away. But before I could get there I received another call which informed me she was going in for emergency surgery. It was then that I put the pedal to the metal to get there before they would be taking her away. I wanted to see her before she went in for surgery. As they always say, no surgery is without risk.

Because my mom had bone cancer, they needed to make sure her blood numbers were up. There was also concerns about clotting. But her numbers weren't up and she needed blood and platelets to even go into surgery. And then there was the reason for the surgery, her intestine had burst and toxins were slowly leaking into her system. A system that was already compromised by the cancer. Even without the cancer the toxins entering into her body was enough to kill her. When I ran into her room, I found her still there waiting for more blood. I had gotten to see my mom! When asked by my brother, I had thought it was best to advise him to fly in to be at the hospital at least by the time she was due out of surgery. The only time I left the hospital was to pick him up.

When we arrived from the airport, she was still in surgery. As we waited in the family area with her husband, I watched a very strange episode of Bonanza. Bonanza had been a favorite of my grandfather's, my mom's dad. He had passed of lung cancer when I was still in high school. I still miss him. It seemed like forever waiting for the community phone to ring in the waiting area. But when they asked for us, we were pleased to know that she had made it out of the surgery successfully. Praise God! It was nice to be able to tell the pastor of her church and the visiting committee the good news when they arrived to lift us up in prayer.

If only the surgery would have been the worst part of this hospital stay. Little did we know it was after the surgery where all of our prayers would be focused. My mother's sleep apnea made it almost impossible for the doctors to agree as to when to take her off the breathing machine she had been placed on for the surgery. Was my mom going to die by respirator failure after coming this far battling cancer and a busted intestine? She was getting weaker and weaker as they refused to take her off the respirator. Finally she came to enough for us to explain what she needed to do to get off the breathing machine. She had to tell them it was her decision to come off the respirator. So per her decision, they did. It wasn't until much later, that we learned that my mother never even remembered coming out of surgery.

She was a week in intensive care and a week in rehab with no real memories. She vaguely remembered seeing flowers and asked if my brother really had come there. She had been consciously unconscious. She never even remembered the many guests that had come to visit her in the week that she was in intensive care at the hospital. So for her to ask to be off the respirator was indeed a miracle. When we told her what she did probably saved her life, she said, "So what did I say again?"

To Be Continued...

The flowers from her siblings- once she was out of intensive care.



The flowers I painted the day my mom got off the respirator!



#11 Freedom Fest

I had arrived in Tennessee in September so the first holiday was Thanksgiving, definitely a family time. My first Thanksgiving without my children wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, since I had decided to be at my mother's house.  The house in Tennessee was tore up from the floor up, literally. A father and son team had been working on tearing up the carpet and laying new hardwood floors. The possibility of them working in the house alone was not even an option, per the family.

As mentioned in a previous post, I was terribly lonely. This was the first time in 25 years, (aka a quarter of a century), that I was living by myself. Three months by myself had not kicked over into a "Freedom Fest" yet. To this day, relatives still laugh about me hopping in the car to attend a same day fish fry. I had driven 4 hours to eat fish at my family's house, when all I really wanted was an excuse to see people, mainly family. It was not a good combination of the house being in a mess and me not adjusting well to my new environment. I didn't know how to slow down or how to enjoy my new "as one" status. Before moving I needed to know what day of the week it was to know what activity I was to attend:

Monday - TAM leadership meeting (Theatrical Arts Ministry)
Tuesday - Possibly free or Video Training
Wednesday - Bible Study
Thursday - G12 (small personal church group meetings) - till it changed days to Friday
Friday - TAM meeting
Saturday - Video Shoots or TAM rehearsals
Sunday - AM & PM  church services which included working Video Ministry (live Internet streaming)

Now, all of those meetings and activities were gone. I remember once seeing an insurance story that spoke of the most stressful times in our lives. It went something like this: #1 Divorce/Breakup #2 Bereavement #3 Moving #4 Losing Job #5 Wedding Planning #6 Work #7 Kids/Family #8 Debt #9 Commuting #10 Pregnancy. Of course it's up to debate as to what should be on the list and at what number. But all I knew was that I could check off at least five to six of those items. And, unfortunately, an aunt whom I had visited while relocating to Tennessee passed that same year. She was the aunt that I had been named after, Aunt Jane. She was a lovely lady both inside as well as out.

It was December 2010, and I had driven to relatives to celebrate my first Christmas of the move. My mother had insisted that it was too bad of road conditions to drive her way, so I went to Kentucky instead. I ended up staying a whole week in December which had also included Christmas. But, days after Christmas I opted to go back to Tennessee to continue the house renovation. The father & son team had finished up literally a day before New Years Eve. This had given me the day before and the day of New Year's Eve to pull it back together again. Once I had gotten the furniture moved back into place, it actually looked like a real home, sweet, home. It was New Year's Eve, and what a joy it was to be able to have taken a nice warm shower in the newly painted and floored house. That night, I watched Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and ran around the house naked, singing and dancing! It was something that I had never been able to do while my children lived with me.

Yes, I had finally realized the beauty of living by myself, I could run around the house naked and screaming if I wanted to! Wow! So I did finally put clothes on that night and called my children 3 hours before their New Years in CA. And I was happy, and they were happy because I was happy! I had finally made some progress and that was a good thing. There I was, I had managed to bring in 2011 with a smile! It was indeed a Happy New Year.  

To Be Continued...





Back Together Again! My Grandmother's Home



Martha Jane Holland Maxwell
6/10/1932 - 12/17/2010 

    

#10 Hit Hard

My driving was almost over. I went to Virginia to visit my mother and her husband. Imagine my surprise when I shared with my mother my mutant spider story (see #9) and she said, "Oh those are jumping spiders." Jump, I thought to myself, those ugly things jump? I'm so glad I didn't know that when I was trying to kill it, I would have been even more mortified. She also shared how they jumped at you and come out at night. So there I was with a new reason to sleep with the lights on. I had a lovely visit with my mother and even got to see my brother and his family who had come down from Pennsylvania. But soon it was time to go back and face the mutant jumping spiders.

After having 1 more face to face encounter with this beast of an insect, the exterminator was called upon to rid me of the frightfest.  After the contract guy  crawled under the house I was informed that the crawlspace was infested with camel crickets, aka cave crickets, spickets, spider crickets...the list goes on. I assumed the picture that he showed me on his cell phone was from the internet so that I could see what he was talking about. However, I almost fainted when he told me it was an actual picture he had taken while under the house. These things ate other bugs, each other, and even their own legs for food during desperate times. They also liked carpet, clothes, curtains, and furniture too. They left droppings as waste, had very bad eye sight, and jumped at their predators with their ugliness to ward them off. None of the pictures do any justice as to how ugly these things are in person.  My saving factor was they were pretty happy with the dark, cool, crawl space. Plus, there was also plenty of food down there with the population boom. Needless to say the exterminators got a contract that day and the spraying began soon afterwards. To this day, I am a personal friend of the man who rid me of these awful creatures and allowed me to stay in the home and sleep with the lights out.

While there for the first month, family came to visit to help make the house a little more livable. After the family had come down to clear the garage of old stuff, it was then that reality set in. The time had stood still long enough for me to realize that I was officially by myself. All boxes had been cleared and things put away before I realized that (real) crickets and the sound of my beating heart and breathing was all I ever heard. I was in a new environment without my children and the closest family member was 3 hours away. Empty Nest Syndrome had hit me hard, for I was willing to drive 3 to 4 hours just to be around family again. It was overwhelming for me. I wasn't employed yet and I had too much time on my hands, the loneliness was more than I could bear. The only human contact I had was when I was on the phone. I felt like Tom Hanks at times in the movie Cast Away. Except  my Wilson ball was a Barbie doll and even though she was my co-pilot (see #3) I really didn't talk to her.

Since the Trail of Tears situation (see #7 & #8), I found myself thinking about all my past failed relationships. That became the cream on top of the Empty Nest Syndrome. The perimenopausal was the cherry on top. I'll admit it now but back then I wanted no one to know that my definition of a good day was when I opened my eyes and didn't start my day by crying. There were two more factors at work against me, the 3 hour time difference and sleep apnea. Eventually, a saving factor became doing slight renovations on the house. I started painting it on the inside. Not only did I paint the living room and 3 bedrooms, but I was also joined by workers tearing out the 30 year old carpet and installing hardwood floors - people, real people! They were extremely slow workers, 2 of them, who worked sporadically from Thanksgiving lasting almost to New Years Eve. It's the only time I didn't care about the speed of a job. But I was slightly concerned about putting the house back together again, since everything had to be moved out of every room to lay the floors.

To Be Continued...




A camel cricket the actual size I faced.



Everything shoved together waiting to be put back again.