Dear Family and Friends,
It’s Dec. 4 and I should be getting into the holiday spirit — and I want to. But working 25 hours a week at 2 jobs (I’m retired???) plus some other activities & projects makes it hard to relax into all the joys of the season. A year ago I wrote of loss and sadness, depression and physical ailments. I’m happy to say all that is behind me and the pendulum has swung back to greater equanimity in my life.
Between Nov. 192 and June, I read 9 books on the “behavioral dis-ease” of CoDependency. While I did not actively follow any of the many ‘cure programs’ each different author proposed, I did gain a deep insight into and greater understanding of my childhood, mother and dad, Bill & myself to help me move beyond the past to a more normal present and future. Over the past 2 years, I have written a Journal of almost 200 pages, and I almost feel “written out” as I start this shorter chronicle this year.
I finished my painting and new carpet in the living room last January. In March I flew to Las Vegas for Spring Break with Fred, Robin, and family in what is becoming a yearly ritual. I already have my discounted air tickets for LV for next March! T.S. Eliot said “April is the cruelest month…” but for me it was truly a major turning point and closure to the last 20 years of my life. First, Faye, Dad’s wife, sold his house in Dayton and moved in with her sister in Tipp City, Ohio. As Faye completely dismantled the house, I finally got most of my mother’s and even a few of my own personal items from the house that I had not been able to get since mother died in 1971. Concurrently, changing my behavior based on my co-Dependency study, and because of some other outside events, Bill changed his behavior more to his good persona, and started relating to me in a positive, friendly, caring fashion – as a friend only. He helped me move stuff from Dayton to Cincy, and I could never have accomplished that difficult feat without him.
Within 2 weeks of that move, in May, I bought a new car and got a new job. I replaced my ’88 Blue Chevy Celebrity station wagon with its almost identical GM cousin – a blue Buick Century sta.wagon – only with a more powerful motor! Then out of the blue, Sylvia Reid called me from the Cincinnati Historical Society at the Union Terminal Museum to ask if I would like to come work for her 15 hours a week as a costume technician repairing and restoring historical clothing – 1830 to present – donated to the museum. Of course I said YES!! That too, has a story. Judy Malone, my friend who works at the museum said. “How can Sylvia hire you? She just got fired from her job here in March!” Turns out Sylvia went to a rich benefactor friend, and got herself & my job funded independently for one year. Some museum employees were taking bets on how long I would last with her. I’ve been walking a tight rope the last 6 months, (again helped by my CoDependency study), & figure if I can make it through the next 2 weeks with her, I should be able to last til next May. Aside from that problem, working at the museum itself is truly exciting, and I love the work I do with the dresses. For 3 weeks in May/June I (who am supposedly retired!!) was working three jobs – Sylvan, UC & the Museum. I quit Sylvan, but still teach my UC speech class on Monday night, Fall, Winter, Spring quarters.
In July I started taking voice lessons again with a wonderful teacher, Anne Moss. I did 5 solos in late summer at church and camp, & will do 2 solos this month -(one in a Messiah performance and one in a paid job at another church), and am working on several other solo/duet pieces for the coming months. It is a shame I had to wait this late in life to find a voice coach who could help me “find my sound” and train me to create and control it. But I intend to enjoy every minute as long as it can last. At present I find this much more satisfying than acting or directing.
My vacation trip this year was attending a wedding in Puerto Rico! My good friend Barbara Sorensen’s daughter Veronne married Orlando Bustos in his mother’s home town of San Juan, Puerto Rico. So for one week I lived on the edges of “the lifestyles of the rich & famous”, staying at the Caribe Hilton Hotel, seeing oid San Juan & El Yunque rain forest, & attending this very international wedding – with guests from Chile, a Puerto Rico, Spain (including an ex-bullfighter), Geneva, Switzerland, as well as Cincinnati, Dayton and a small town from Illinois.
The area itself, along with some very dramatic tropical storm clouds, afforded me the opportunity to shoot some terrific photography. Picking my personal postcard for you from Puerto Rico was extremely difficult this year. The photo was taken at Fort San Cristobal. The unique sentry boxes are sort of a tourist logo for San Juan and Puerto Rico. The box out almost over the ocean was called the Devil’s sentry box – because Spanish sentries would be assigned there (sometimes for punishment), and then they would disappear for days at a time. Actually, they just jumped out the sentry box into the ocean, swam ashore, and went AWOL for a few days, then would mysteriously show up again for duty! Fort San Cristobal and its counterpart, El Morro, were built by the Spanish in the 1500’s to defend the island and port. They did their job very effectively for almost 400 years until USA invaded Puerto Rico from the south of the island during the Spanish-American war, and acquired the island.
I also got some dramatic and exciting photography on a one day cruise on the Ohio River on the West Virginia Belle riverboat in October. In the early morning, the Belle sailed through shifting fog banks, mists curling up from the water, and a bright sun stabbing through and playing around these ephemeral elements. Leaves, just starting to turn, showed vivid reds & yellows within a rich sea of green; the afternoon sky was a clear, warm, intense blue and the calm river reflected everything like a shimmering mirror. Ironically, with all this beauty, 2 of my best shots are of power plants!!
As the year ends, I think of friends lost — Aunt Hazel Brown, Bob Hendershot, and Delores Miles — and family ‘found’ – Cousin Cary and Lindsay Brown & Aunt Hazel’s other children – ; and friends and family who have visited me or “touched base” by phone or at camp this year. Tad Currie was here from Chicago in April; Robin Munier came to Cincy from Las Vegas in June for a National PTA Convention and it was great fun being special Cincinnati tour guide for her and her friends; Lindsay and her friend visited our Art and Union Terminal Museums in August, and it was wonderful to find that Lindsay and I have a common love for both historical clothing and photography.
I will spend Christmas with my good friends Barbara, Glenn, Pam and Rufus Smith — and as I raise my candle high during the singing of Silent Night on Christmas Eve, I will say a prayer for the health and happiness of all my dear friends far and near for this season and for the year to come.