I am an enthusiastic devotee of
and her Grown Ups Table (GUT) Substack. Recently, she offered us all an assignment: to draw gratitude via each of the five senses. I dutifully did mine, discovered a theme of warmth and comfort, and decided I’d share the whole thing here with you all. Also to recommend, most highly, subscribing to her artistic, community project.You don’t know you can tell the difference between the sound of a zipper opening, and the sound of a zipper closing, but you can. I discovered I could when I heard the furnace technician zip closed her tool bag in the basement. Sure enough, a moment later she called up the stairs, “Everything looks good!” Which means our family can be warm, as November advances and it gets colder and colder and darker and darker.
In sadness, in grief, in a state where I spend long stretches of time on the floor, I only want mush to eat. Gruel, paste, soft foods, beige and off white. Meal as meal. For when chewing is too much effort.
The fish tank is positioned where it’s the first thing I see when I look up from my work to think. The fish gliding suspend thoughts. My head goes empty as they chase each other, or hover in space, or, at feeding time, suck in the flakes and then, for some reason, spit them back out again, catch them again, over and over, like stage performers juggling airy, colorful scarves.
Piles and piles of paper everywhere. Paper books, magazines, newspapers when I can get them, though, to my everlasting disappointment, the New York Times discontinued home delivery to my small New Hampshire town, so now I have to read it on my stupid iPad when all I want is to palpate the pages again, gray my fingertips with ink, and have something to start the woodstove with.
Dead mice in the walls make up at least fifty percent of our insulation by this point. Living mice are in the attic and basement, and they climb into our bird cage to steal seeds, bold as brass while we sit in the den watching TV at night. Sometimes, when we smell a fresh dead one, we can find it, but sometimes we just have to wait until it rots all the way wherever it is and stops smelling acrid and septic. I read somewhere that “old house smell” is mainly down to all those generations of desiccated mouse mummies stably snug under the floorboards, and behind the picture frames.
Deeply felt as always - by you, and by me. It reminded me of the great clean out of my parents’ home in Newton, where I still had “my room,” which had over the past years been inhabited within the walls by squirrels. I fully expected them to appear in the last few weeks that I was sleeping there before it was taken over by its new owners, who were not made aware of the unseen inhabitants. However, the only remnant of their visitation appeared when either Beck or Nate or both moved the heavy china cabinet in the dining room and discovered a dessicated squirrel. Be well. These are difficult times to be humans or squirrels. Terribly sad times.