Port Townsend, WA 4-JAN-2025 – I was thinking about a conversation I had with someone about her graduate school career. It was a story she’d told me many times, but this time she told the group the rest of the story.* It is a story I always looked on fondly because I was a tangential part of the story.
Having her tell the story felt very recent, perhaps two months ago. I was thinking about this on Thanksgiving, and this friend is all over the press at this time of year. I pondered it warmly and then thought about the last time we saw each other. It was years ago, nine years ago. How can this be?
During the stroke, all of my memories became scrambled. It took a while to straighten them out, this includes a lot of vocabulary. On the plus side, things that I hadn’t thought of in a long time came to mind, but things like this have happened.
Does everyone have a good memory for how long ago something happened? Mine was excellent. I could ‘‘see’’ how long ago something happened by how clear it was, like looking through the air, the further the distance the less transparent the air is.
Now it’s not like that. Many memories float free. I can see them as clearly as something recent. The problem is that recent memories are not fitting into place, slowly receding in time as they used to. Looking backwards they’re not fitting seamlessly into the recent past. They’re not there at all, unless I concentrate and find some other way of locating them. Going forward is the same, I don’t have that easy feeling of how far into the future some date is. I suppose it is because I can’t easily see the past, I can’t easily see the future.
It made bringing Caro Babbo home to Puget Sound stressful for me because we had a hard date. I have Jennifer to navigate and figure these things out so it worked and works well.
I’m working hard on reorganizing my mind, like Lazarus in the Heinlein series, placing memories in order, linking them one to another.
Recently, I’ve been scanning pictures and VHS tapes and watching documentaries about things from fifty years ago. The things that happened before my birth are interesting, but those that happened when I was a sentient being tend to disorient me. Though, as I work on this, the haze starts to fill in and I begin to recognize how long ago something was.
Recent history is still difficult. Once I recall something recent it is as clear as those memories ever were.
Looking forward to this year it is a bit difficult keeping everything in order. I still have the decision to make on the boat: whether to get a slip in Olympia permanently, across the summer, or not at all. Surprisingly Jennifer thinks we should forego a slip and just be free to anchor wherever. She wants the boat in PT next year so we can go winter sailing easily, and then repeat the next spring. I don’t know, there are an awful large number of boaters out vacationing.
The dates to get everything done are starting to press, but if I work constantly, like a job, I can have it all done in a month. That takes us to February, when I must make that decision. Mid-March is when we start traveling: A road trip that takes us to Atlanta and two weeks at the Decatur house. There are some larger projects I want to undertake, then a week in Trinidad, then two weeks in Europe, then a week or two on the road trip home. I need to be back by the 24th of April. The slip expires on the first of May.
The house must be made ready to rent, which needs a deep cleaning, painting and reupholstering. This all needs to get started. It is very much like making a large dinner for 14 or 18 people, which I once did several times per year. It was concentration on the tasks so that they all ended at the correct time. No warming ovens where things sit and dry out, or days in the fridge with the same result.
In the next two weeks I must refinish the headliners. Everything has arrived: I’ll wash some and re-cover others. I must remove the fresh water tank. A marina mate will help and guarantees he has the tools and expertise†. I worry about that.
I must rebuild the mounting in the galley cabinet for the stove. I have the parts, the drill and the sabre saw to do it. Once I start I am nervous.
Jennifer will cover the cushions in the aft cabin.
I need to take the 135% to a sailmaker in town, Emiliano, who never remembers me. I think it just needs a patch and a little restitching. I also need to get his opinion on the hanks. His partner, Sue seems to like me a lot.
After all of this, the boat needs to be reassembled, parts of the exterior repainted, spreader lights mounted… and a few dozen other things taken care of. A full-time job. I need to treat this like a full-time job. Hanging out with Jennifer seems much more important and more temporary, precious. But having the boat finished and the house rented encourages it all.
This year Michela and her husband will come with us for a week. After last year, Jennifer wants to book dock space most nights in advance. I don’t know how zoo-ey it will be wherever we go. It is a worry, but we should have an idea by the time they arrive in August. I’ll have to check whether they can travel to Canada, that will make a difference as well.
The work I am doing I’m doing an okay job on. I should have stripped off the veneer on two leaves of the cockpit table and the cabin table. I’ll do that next year when that will be the only work I’ll do, I hope. I still must buy plywood and veneer for the top of the salon cabinets. These hide the window bolts. When I drop the headliner, I must remember to fill the holes where the screws have pulled out.
Next year, yep, I’m already thinking about next year’s boat work: A composting toilet. Something to ponder. No pump-out stations to worry about.
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- The story goes like this: When the then-young woman, 20 years old and just graduating from SUNY Stony Brook, was applying to a Clinical Psychology program, she was interviewed by a panel of people, who asked all the intrusive questions one might expect from a group of clinicians. The conversation came around to why the woman left Hunter College and transferred to Stony Brook. She was getting a bit frustrated as she told of conflicts between herself and her mother’s new husband. The decision was for her to move out and attend SUNY. One of the panel members asked, ‘‘Did you resolve the conflict?’’ My friend who was hitting her limit responded, ‘‘Yes, He’s dead.’’ She laughs when she tells this story. ‘‘There was silence. No one asked how he died.’’
For the first time, I said, ‘‘So you didn’t get into that school.’’ Forty years after the event she responded, ‘‘Yes, they accepted me.’’ Her life took a turn after that and she became a researcher in family narratives, and is interviewed every Thanksgiving.
† If we turn too much will we rip the through-hull out of the fibreglass? Heating the fitting where they couple is the approach, with a long wrench for leverage. I’ll keep everyone posted on this. It is this that is leaking, not the dripless prop fitting, thankfully.