+ Her Barefoot Heart

Tag: california

72

Tonight’s serendipitous Envoy is none other than Emily Lewis of Pleasure Notes. Andy and I are spending tonight in a Los Angeles hotel, you see, about 3 blocks from LAX where we’ll hop into a big chair in the sky in the morning to wing our way home. Emily, who lives here in LA, was kind enough to brave the ever-present LA traffic and come join us for supper. Dessert was when she agreed to hold Nancy’s stitched drawing #72. It was quite moving to watch Emily take the cloth in her hands and gaze at Nancy’s drawing. She held is so tenderly and with such respect. “Oh, look,” she said when I handed it to her. “This is so beautiful.” I told her how this afternoon I started filling in the large space at the bottom. I just needed to fiddle with something, I told her, but then I ripped it all out cause it doesn’t seem to need anything else. Emily agreed. It’s enough just as it is, she said. Now I know she was talking about Nancy’s drawing, but I declare: I thought of her when she said it.

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She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

71

First she draws:

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Then I stitch:

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Visited Aunt Ginny again today. The long, hard drive was made enjoyable by Ro and Bob, new friends of ours, old friends of Aunt Ginny’s. We just met them yesterday but feel like we’ve known each other for eons. Photo taken on some contraption at the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, CA.

~~~~~~~~~

She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

68

We visited Aunt Ginny today. She and Nancy now share living situations, both barely mobile, both living in a house with 3-5 other women needing round-the-clock care. It is a 2.5 hour drive from Aunt Ginny’s home of how-ever-many decades to the personal care home where she now resides. The drive took us through landscapes that are as barren as they are beautiful. Countryside that seems willing to hold us all, in our quirkiness, in our infirmities, in our tomfooleries.

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Aunt Ginny was quite chatty, mostly entertaining us with nonsensical stories, interrupting us whenever we tried to interject the shortest sentence. I asked her to tell us stories – and she did. They were fantastical stories, unusual stories, stories that were true only on certain planets. Some might feel the need to correct her when she is glaringly out of touch with reality, but I just say pfffft and join her in conversation wherever she is at any given moment. It’s better than any carnival ride, and if she could remember afterwards, I’m betting she’d feel quite validated.

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Note: Posting across the street from a plane graveyard which is also the first official spaceport in the USA.

~~~~~~~~~

She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.