Gladys's Nervous Day

In my own life, I find that if I have what I call a "nervous day" and dash frantically from a hasty breakfast to a quick supper, I haven't, in the end, accomplished a single thing worth while. Not a single thing. All I have done is get keyed up and tired out.

Gladys Taber

The Stillmeadow Road

Oh, my dear Gladys, you always seem to know just what I am going through myself!

Sometimes at the end of a nervous day I feel as if I haven't accomplished a thing even though I have cooked and eaten breakfast, showered and made the beds, started laundry, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, picked up around the house, dusted, folded laundry, cooked supper and cleaned up the kitchen again. 

Between times I've also fielded phone calls and wished people would learn to text--yes, I've gone over to the dark side--and fed and brushed the dogs and let them outside and back in a dozen times, fed the birds, paid the bills, checked email, Facebook, blogs, Pinterest......

You know the story, it's called a day at home. 

Gladys was a busy woman, between writing novels and Stillmeadow books and articles for women's magazines, but even she had to actually take care of Stillmeadow  and concoct three meals a day. No wonder she sometimes had nervous days.

And she didn't have social media to deal with! I'm glad the poor dear didn't because she even rebelled when her phone service went from asking the village operator to connect her to someone, to having to use a rotary dial telephone.

She let her friends and children know that they would have to call her from then on. And she never did quite figure out how to operate the vacuum cleaner or washing machine.

I had one of Gladys's nervous days a few days into 2019. I desperately wanted to take down all the Christmas decor, waking up one morning and realizing I was over it. I needed to pack it all away more efficiently, eliminating more of it.

After that was done I looked at my Christmas-naked rooms and wondered if I really wanted them put back the way they had been before Christmas went up. The thought of it made me jittery. That led to some subtle changes. 

Then I went into my disheveled office/writing room where all the Christmas bins are stored in one corner. There were piles everywhere: personal and financial paperwork, months of blog post ideas, files of paperwork from books I'm writing, stacks of books I've read with little post-it notes sticking out with quotes that I wanted to type, stacks of books I'm waiting to read, piles of things that I've forgotten what I meant to do with them.

And I felt like tearing my hair out or crawling into bed or sitting down and binging on House of Cards all over again. Anything other than cleaning that office.

So I closed the door and went in the kitchen because meals must be cooked whether you are nervous or not.

Cooking always calms me down. I think it did Gladys too.

Each day this week I have gone to my office and sorted papers and books. I have organized the heck out of papers and books but they are still in piles. I keep thinking that once it is all organized that then it will look organized. But it doesn't yet and that makes me very nervous. 

So I go back to my kitchen and wash dishes or cook.

Our Amaryllis 'Caprice' keeps me company as she has since early December. She has given me of her beauty in generous doses that have sometimes almost been more than I could handle as I studied her colors and delicate petals.

"All of this for me?" I ask her, as she has given me bloom after bloom unstintingly, the second stalk even gifting me with five huge blooms.

And as I spritzed the moss around her base and saw it return daily to jade green, I noticed that even the grass has put on tiny flowers. Who knew it would do that?

I've smiled at the miracle of that, foolish Gladys Taber mentee that I am.

I realized this week that my husband really knows and understands me. He understands the pleasure I have gotten from this large window over my kitchen sink ever since we moved in two years ago.

He notices that things change seasonally and that it is really not the place for him to plop a sponge pad down to dry. He knows that his coffee thermos is not going to be there long when he empties it out at night and puts hot water in it to soak. Because when I see it sitting in my window I move it.

I think he realizes now that this window is not only my view to the garden that he made for me last spring and summer but it is also my canvas.

I'm guessing that he has learned that there always needs to be something pink blooming there, or about to bloom. The other day he brought home a $3.99 hyacinth bulb from the grocery store.

He couldn't, wouldn't, have pleased me more if it had been diamonds. Naturally, it is pink.

And I savor that.

What I haven't done is savor the delight of the day, for every day has delight if we take time to look for it. And when I think it over, I feel I have wasted a day, and no way will ever come again.

Gladys Taber

I love it when my heroes are not perfect all the time, when they've walked the same road I have and learned from it and then taught me about it. 

Like Gladys, I have to do the best I can, failing sometimes and picking myself up and starting all over again the next day. 

It's still going to be winter for a long time, like it or not. I happen to enjoy it and am in no hurry for the months when we'll once again use our outdoor dining room. 

There's still time for winter cooking, not holiday food but nothing stringently painful either.

There's still time to finish organizing my office/writing room. At least the old primitive green drop-leaf table that I use for my desk has been cleaned off.

I knew I would be forced to start with that if I piled everything that had been dumped on it lately into my recliner.

 And gradually I'll work my way around the rest of the room, because after all, when my youngest granddaughter left to go home on Christmas Eve, she gave me a little something.....

 She left some of her Super Hero Girls power with me!

That office is due for some major clean up! Because it really does make me have nervous spells the way it is now.

But first I might go to the kitchen and check on Caprice. She and I might even bake a cake first.

Cake, amaryllis 'Caprice' and Gladys. This winter is going to be too short for all the wonderful things we're going to do!