Continuity Matters

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Tower 4. Ocean Beach, CA.

Himself: Went to the museum workshops for a volunteer meeting. Jobs: Nothing to apply for today. Ran errands with me, dinner, gaming. Herself: Wrote all morning. Got the Victorian chest up, drawers filled and in, and a piece written for class tomorrow. Dug up old journal transcripts, and now I am off to fold laundry. Feeling tired but healthy. Reaching into the edited journal entries for content. Reading: Still the new Robb mystery. Balance: Working out this morning in the warm water. The pool will be closed next week for federally mandated repairs. Grrrrrrrrr……..

Journal entry: April 26, 1977: It’s been a hurry up and wait week. A drawing, shopping, working, laying on the beach with a book week. Some books were good, others there was no excuses for at all. Lots of thrillers and syrupy, gooey books of love and romance. Some biographies. At least I am reading again.

I thought I should throw an “I Ching” for the new me. Now that Grandmamma is moving north, I will be truly alone without a close friend and confidant for the first time in four years. Most of the time I have known him, he has been constantly in and out of the house, always a physical presence. He cared for my children. He put up with my madness. Even when I firmly believed the Mafia was out to get me, he would just raise an eyebrow and continue being a friend.

Pretending the Mafia was checking up on me, one day I said with a smile, “It’s about time I got inspected again, isn’t it? Time to make the bed and get the kids clean.”

He replied in all seriousness, “You used to scare me so badly with your stories. But then one day I began to believe you…the day that man kicked in your front window.”

So I throw and get “T-Hung Shan: Society.” It tells me that I will be joining those who have no common goal, have no common past, and have nothing in common but of being equally lost and cut off from other men. I ask the I Ching how I can correct this, and it tells me “Heng: Continuity.” So I shall keep on keeping on as best I can, but it sounds frightening being lost and cut off from others.

I have the continuity of Lessa in my life. Some moments she is remarkably mature, and then other moments her life shatters into madness.

I yelled at her for dumping her dinner in the cat dish, so she ran out the door screaming at me that she didn’t care what I thought. Now I wait up late until she comes home. I am tired and really worried about her. Is she is on drugs? No appetite for a week. And the kids alternate their behaviors with Margot being terrible one week and Milaka the next. Their hormones rage through their bodies and nothing I say matters.

Continuity matters.

I spend much of my time this week interviewing people for my job at Amelia’s. I can hardly wait to be free of her. Most of the applicants cannot drive. Some cannot understand what I am saying. Three nurses applied and Amelia wanted no nurses. The list of “no’s” is endless.

In the end I retreated to the beach attempting to finish off “Remembered Laughter,” Leslie Cole’s Biography of Noel Coward. I cannot seem to do it. Do all the people in this book have no souls? They are all great and famous, but I cannot seem to reach through the dullness of the prose to their humanity. Noel Coward was lost here. Or Leslie Cole lost everyone.

I remind myself that continuity is really all that matters.