Since Adrian died, I’ve been trying to remake my life, figuring out how to balance alone time and social time.
I’m a person who needs a lot of down time, yet I always feel awkward using that as an excuse not to get together with a friend.Friendships need to be nurtured in order to be sustained, and I have trouble doing this in a considerate, yet balanced way.
This past weekend I had too much social time.On Friday night I had the opening reception for my exhibit at the Frame Shop, which I had been anxious about for days.
I needn’t have been.Friends and other visitors trickled in and out the whole evening.For backup, my daughter and granddaughter Rachel were there.Rachel brought a book to read, and Blixy brought two, but there wasn’t really any down time.The hours flew by and then five of us went out to dinner afterwards.
All my worries were for naught, as usual.
Did it help that I wore the necklace made from the crystal that Adrian brought back from Mt. Roima in Venezuela years ago on one of his adventures?Wearing it, I felt his protective presence.
Saturday I woke up sluggish and dull.
But Saturday night I had another social engagement—a gathering of neighbors in our new neighbor’s back yard.They are all good people, and it was only two hours of standing around drinking, eating and talking.
But it was one more social engagement than I needed in a single weekend.
By Sunday, I was a wreck.
But I had promised to go with a friend to a reading at Buffalo Street Books—authors reading for eight minutes each from their works in progress.
Would I even be able to stay awake for it?
I took a catnap before the event.My friend and I got there in time to grab a couple of chairs.
Robin Botie was the first reader.She and I had been in a “singing grieving” support group at Hospicare together a while ago.We both found that singing helped us work through the pain.So did writing.
When Robin read, I heard her grief transformed into art.Her story, In The Wake of Marika, is a gift to us all.
The next readers were terrific, too.Ithaca is blessed with many, many good writers.
I left the works-in-progress reading feeling greatly refreshed.
