"A true friend has the power to double your joys and divide your sorrows."
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all came equipped with some way to predict when everything was going to fall apart, so we'd know to run away and hide for a week... or two? Then again, I suppose if we knew what was ahead, we'd never face the difficult stuff; some of it truly hard, painful, sad. Some of it just plain annoying.
Such has been the past two weeks at our house. One calamity (sorry Kim, had to borrow the word...nothing else could describe it so thoroughly) after another. Some minor in cost, degree, emotional expenditure. Some not so easy to dismiss.Too easy to lie awake in bed at night drowning in one's own tears. "When it rains, it pours" and at my place, it monsoons. But what can you do but cry, snarl at the cats and start again?
My patience has been completely tested, having lost cable and internet--lifelines these days, as you all know--then a big problem with a leak spreading in my attic (over my workspace), which is now almost completely repaired but cost me more than the expense of the repairs themselves.... it cost me valuable time, unable to use my studio to create.
In the midst of all this and the shock of the 'one thing after another' setting in, the washer decided to go crazy. My poor daughter came screaming into the house, "Mom!!! The washer's on fire!" Black smoke and a delightful burning rubber smell quickly engulfed the house... It wasn't on fire; it just wanted to be. So goes the washer. Next, later that same day, one of our cat's required an emergency visit to the vet. He's okay, thank goodness. My checkbook, however, has been given a proper burial.
About the time you truly think, 'it just can't get any worse' .... knowing all the time that, yep, it really CAN get worse; you just don't want it to..... my sister got some news that made everything else seem so completely inconsequential, that I felt ridiculous having wasted any time whatsoever, moaning over the "problems" that I'd been experiencing. There is nothing like your heart aching so completely you think you can't breathe, to put everything else in perspective. And boy, has my vantage point changed.
In the middle of the worst of it all, the mail carrier rings the bell and reluctantly hands over a big box. It has the slight fragrance of roses, and promises good things inside. I received a big hug from Kimberlee Edgar! Who knew those could come in a box? But when you see the pictures of the incredible care and kindness Kimberlee laced through the package, you'll understand how I felt, as every treasure was revealed. (And all in the most fabulous black and white dotted tissue and secured with Kimberlee's signature moth ephemera!)
It's gestures of kindness and compassion, just a simple acknowledgment that someone is having a rough time, that mean more than a person can really measure. I so appreciate all of my wonderful friends that I have met through the blog world. You all bring such a sense of "all for one and one for all" (a nod to Miss Donna, Queen of the Swashbucklers) and a feeling that 'alone' is all in one's mind. Thank you for keeping in touch even when I was out of the loop, and for your generous spirits!
