After pulling off half the underskirting on the car and elegantly putting the rest back together with zip ties and duct tape, today I nervously nursed it to the body shop.
My plan (after talking to the insurance company) was to do this out-of-pocket. I have a pretty high deductible, and how much could a damaged bumper cost? My plan was to leave it there, get a rental for a few days, and get it back hopefully in a week or so.
Hah! He gave it a quick look over and said "you probably want to go through your insurance company - this will be $1500 - $2000." I asked if I could go ahead and leave it there - and nope. He couldn't give an estimate today - that has to wait for a request from the insurance company. He assured me that it's OK to drive it without the underskirting (still makes me nervous). So this afternoon I filed the claim, and rescheduled the inspection, and then Lord only knows when I can get it repaired.
All this for barely touching a curb.
Meanwhile, possibly to sooth myself, I've been knitting again. I use to knit incessantly - I kept my bag hanging on a hook on the wall so I could grab it anytime (there was awhile that one parent or another would end up in the emergency room fairly often). I knit whenever I could when Bob was in the hospital; I didn't finish anything, and about a year after I came home unraveled the three projects I had started because whenever I picked them up I was transported back to where I had been and what I was feeling when I worked on them. Of course, I could have just thrown them away, but they were all quite nice handspun yarns and I figured that eventually the anger would leak out of them, as a friend once said.
I still spin, just because that's my zen. But I've only knit one thing since I came back from Gainesville.
But I recently finished some really lovely yarns out of an outrageously soft camel down and silk fiber and my fingers got a little itchy to sample it.
I started knitting some samples from it - then cast my eye on some fall-colored wool yarn. Normally, my default is to knit elaborate lacy shawls like the above- more for show than for warmth. This earthtone yarn was a thicker than my usual lace, and the long color segments in it were pretty - but if you combine obvious colors with lace, they both seem to fight each other. I tried a pattern which is about as dead simple as can be, but shows off those colors, and suddenly I was hooked (alas - after I knit it for awhile, I realized that I would run out of yarn, so I had to rip it out and restart it a little smaller). The pattern is so simple that not only could I watch TV - but I could read! My email inbox was overloaded with "mean to read" New York Times articles and a science newsletter - so I've been knitting and reading and it's helped me get over the car panic. I've only done two of the six panels so far but I like the way it's showing off the colors. And unlike the fancy ones, this one should be warm.
Now for the quiet. I've written a bit this year about just feeling quiet. A lot of cleaning, a lot of reading, a little going out but never forcing myself. No creative urges. I realized now that there's been a bit of an edge to the quiet, a sort of tenseness of "waiting for the other shoe to drop." I realize now it's because nothing has really happened this year (the car thing, yes, but honestly nothing got hurt but my bank account)
I've done recountings before - sometimes reminding myself why I feel upset or unbalanced. So - to recount the recountings. From just before Bob and I went to Gainesville - December 2019 - to August 2023, so three years and eight months, I lost Bob, five other friends died (Anna, Ellen, Shannon, Chris, and Mischa), and Rob and Jeff moved. Four cats died (Wilhelm, Nazgul, Apache, and Tula) and I almost lost Hamish. On far too many occasions I came home to the mangled remains of my chickens and peacocks. All this against the background of the pandemic. So basically I spent those 44 months in a state of reaction. 2024?? Not much - near miss by the tornado and slightly less near miss by the hurricane, but that's it (knock wood, throw salt, spin three times, whatever for luck). It's been a year now since Mischa died - and in that year, no one else I know has. The cats and chickens are doing well. No wonder it has felt strange, and a bit unnatural.
I'm getting glimmers of creativity again. The knitting, and I've signed up for an online puppet course (rod puppet) at the end of the month. I've been watching a few TED talks on puppetry - as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, they somehow draw people in, with their belief necessary to bring the inanimate object to life. But even then, I got a pang. I was watching the puppetry used for the stage version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. They had an interesting concept for the great lion Aslan, in that he was portrayed by both a large puppet and a human actor (showing the spirit of the lion)
Yes, it made me think of Bob. You know how we all carry the idea of our secret self inside? Like on the outside I might be the childless cat lady who lives alone (and isn't it a little sad) but I like to think of myself as the Swamp Witch. Well, the human Aslan above is how I pictured Bob. Strong, noble, perhaps a bit wild and feral.
I wonder if it helped him sometimes - maybe on those days when his leg hurt and his boss had been a jerk and he was just plain tired - knowing that this is how I saw him. My druid, my changeling bear.
Yes, he knew I saw him that way, just as I knew that he saw me as the mysterious woman in Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat." And I have to admit that I liked his view of me a lot better than I liked my more boring and mundane view of myself. I miss being that woman.
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat
She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
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