EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN Kate’s Journal

Episode 35 Fremont, CA 1974

Welcome to our house!

We had no great welcoming home party when we returned, and probably some people were unaware we had ever left. In the five years we lived in the Northwest, we forged a well worn path to family and friends between Kirkland and Fremont, so that technically we almost lived in both places.

What we needed to find first was someplace to put our stuff, which having lost Mrs. Peel, Tuffy and Rudy,now included Liza, a large German Shepherd Dog. I had thought perhaps to buy someplace where we could live and have a shop. I could work while customers dropped in and shopped. We would also have homemade soup and breads and maybe a cricket or two!

This did not work out so we bought with the idea of staying a couple of years while we looked for the ideal spot. Those couple of years have now stretched to forty-two!

Family Room

The DIY strain was strong in us after our building projects in Kirkland, so we built this very large room in which the grandchildren and I roller skated until we laid the tile.

Teaching at the City and shortly thereafter at the new College which had been built while we were gone, plus watching grandchildren were pleasant occupations while exposing two active boys to camping and fishing.

I began feeling tired. It was a tiredness which seeped into my bones, and which no amount of sleeping could alleviate. Finally seeing the doctor I learned that I had lupus and Sjogrens’s. Going to the library on the way home from the doctor and reading up on both diseases was not encouraging. There was no cure and I began feeling sorry for myself. I told my sister-in-law my tale of woe, and her suggestion was perhaps we ought to hold Christmas early. That snapped me out of it and I settled into a more pragmatic attitude. This was 40 years ago and against all odds I’m still here.

The only reason I am sharing this with you is to show you that you gain another perspective. As Gilda Radner of NSL famously said, “There’s always something.” As things turned out, this diagnosis was the first of many, and you begin to realize that everyone has something. You just keep going forward and hope you don’t trip.

Luckily, while teaching students marketing techniques, I formed relationships with several galleries to handle my artwork. We had always loved Carmel, and I found a delightful gallery which handled my work for years. It gave us a purpose to visit this lovely town often. The small folly in our garden, with its whimsical paintings and built by our late brother-in-law, is my small Carmel.

Maus Haus

The City owned Olive Hyde building where I taught for so many years had become a fine small art gallery, and it was thrilling to bring in so many talented artists from all over California.

You never know what the world has in store for you.

Living Room

THE AUTUMN OF REPAIRS

I don’t usually name seasons for the activities they bring.  You know, like Steinbeck’s “Winter of our Discontent”, but this one brought lots of good stuff which culminated in my becoming well-acquainted with several nice men in the medical profession.

First, the good stuff included a lovely trip to Carmel, courtesy of our family to celebrate our amazing 65th anniversary.  Amazing because neither of us is old enough to have been married that long.  We basked in the sun, shopped till our legs felt weak, dined in style,  and spent the evenings enjoying the sunset while overlooking the ocean and large resident flock of sheep who looked as if they never missed a meal.

Arriving home, our children and grandchildren put togther a grand party for 65 people in two days that would have taken me a month in my best days.   So much for good genes.  They obviously did not get them from me.

And that’s the last of the good stuff.

Next came the matter of repairs.  First came cataract surgery, which today is a piece of cake.  You get a bigger and better exam than usual, and in my case, was told that I am “color deficient”, which to the uninitiated, is color blindness.  This, and I have been fooling the public and my students for years that I knew what I was doing.  Then they treat you ever so nicely while you wait your turn among a roomful of old people.  “Why am I here?”)  When I got into the tidy little OR (that’s short for operating room) the doctor I already didn’t like because of the color blindness crack, said abruptly “Well, I hope you don’t cough.”  (That’s because I DO have a coughing problem.)  Not the beginning of a great friendship.  I felt like doing it anyway except he was the one with the scalpel.  This led to new glasses of course, which were much stronger, and very expensive, but introduced me to a charming young optometrist I could really get to like,  so that could be added to the good stuff, because I probably will have to see him again sometime.

OK.  All is going along beautifully, until a bad toothache told me I had come to the end of the line, and would have to break up the lifelong friendship I have had with my teeth.  My charming nephew told me one day “Auntie, I can’t patch you up anymore.”  He went into the next room while I pondered just what he had in mind.

When he came back into the room I was having a lovely conversation with one of his cute nurses, so I was relaxed and unprepared when he said that all the teeth on the bottom had to go.  They were no longer carrying their part of the load.  What the hell did this mean?

Next I went to visit the oral surgeon, who made an appointment for me to come in and he would happily remove them all and give me two (or maybe 4) implants  Easy for him to say.  It’s me that will have to suffer the pain and sacrifice and economic disaster.

I have a deeprooted belief that suffering will make me a better person, thanks to my grandma Nellie.  Who by the way was a Christian Scientist, and didn’t believe in pain and suffering.  It simply was not there.  It’s that kind of upbringing that makes you an agnostic.

Surgery day came and out came the teeth.  All of them.  I kid you not.  The surgery is not bad (I might add that there were a number of teeth which were broken off at the gum, ) and I was in dreamland during the process.  Not as bad as I thought.  After all, I had lost all the upper ones some time ago and survival is possible.

Dr. Advice had a good time giving advice about putting my food into the blender, and calling my new teeth “choppers”.  That’s OK for him to say, but just try putting the Thanksgiving turkey into a blender.

But all is wll, and I have gorgeous new  teeth, which will be the envy of all the other old ladies I know, and maybe even the young ones. Now I just have to get them to work.

And more good stuff.  I no longer have to brush and floss after every meal.  And when someone says “Say cheese” with a camera pointed my way, I can grin with the best of them.