Abigail Carter's Blog

I sat down with Ronit Plank to discuss my story of loss for her podcast, And Then Everything Changed. You can listen below.

Here is the Apple Podcast

And for those that don’t have Apple, here it is on PodBean.

The post An Alchemy of Loss Podcast appeared first on Abigail Carter.

I awaken one night to stretch, my head flings back and suddenly the room lurches. I fall back into a fitful sleep hoping it will be gone in the morning. This isn’t the first time vertigo has struck, so I know what I’m in for. When I again wake up, I stumble downstairs to let out the dog and find myself clutching the side of the house to retch. Thankfully after a day or so, the nausea subsides into a spinning world, and I muddle through a new skewed view of my life, exhausted and dazed. I am forced to quit a contract job and visit a physical therapist who twists my head into nauseating positions to send my dislodged ear crystals back where they belong.

I arrive at Camp Widow off balance. I have two workshops in one day, and volunteered to be a camp Ambassador and I don’t know how I am going to get through the next four days. For my workshop on “Creativity After Loss” I brought supplies for approximately 35 people, but learn 64 have signed up. I hop into a Uber and get more art supplies. I cling to the podium through the workshop and Selena (my mother-in-law) and Lynn Campbell (volunteer extraordinaire!) take over as my workshop elves, helping lay out the art supplies, and getting everyone set up to paint. It’s a shitshow, but the workshop seems to be well-received, and I don’t fall over. I cling to the podium again through a second workshop on Anger. I get costumed for the Gala, frustrated when I realize I can’t dance. I am surrounded by superheroes and feel like the antithesis of one, as if I’m holding Kryptonite.

A couple of Camp Widow Wonder Women.

Being off-balance is a perfect metaphor for my state of mind. If I’m honest, I’ve been off-balance since my break up. Yes, I’ve done all the things I myself would advise. I write about my heartache (words no one will ever see). I take up painting as an outlet to my grief. I exercise. I drink plenty of water, sleep and eat well. But my body betrays me, my hip zinging me on a daily basis and now vertigo reminding me that the world is turning at a furious pace. I am trying to regain my footing, but stumbling.

I make it through camp and lay at the pool to decompress, but the noise and the sunshine are cloying, everything slightly out of focus and I can’t relax. Back in Seattle, as my plane touches down, I open social media to the happy photos of his new love, having completed their first marathon relay race together, the reason I had to scramble last minute to find alternate dog care. The floor collapses beneath me. I should be used to the spinning by now, but this spins me sideways in another direction.

All I have are my words so I write him a letter, one I will never send, trying to release my pain and anger, trying to right my world again. I want him to know the pain he has caused and wonder how he has escaped it, knowing he hasn’t, not really. He’s just repeating a pattern, cranking the same reel one more time. I’d like to step off my wheel for a while and take a break from the whirling.

But does the world ever stop spinning?

The post As The World Spins appeared first on Abigail Carter.

Healing is found within colors, within foundations. Inside, during “Snowmageddon,” alone within white walls among those colors, primary and secondary is a child, rediscovered, who knows instinctively how to play with paints and brushes, who knows and loves messy. She allows the colors to heal her as they find their way inside, nourishing her. She pushes paints around a canvas, mostly to see what will happen when she bumps turquoise into fuchsia, jams indigo against tangerine, splashing, smearing, drizzling, dripping. Time disappears. With art comes an old desire to travel and see new colors and textures, make new friends, taste new flavors. Opportunities arise for globetrotting in the name of art and friendships. Bursting, her biggest obstacle is in knowing what and when to focus her attention. She bounces from one room, one medium to another, painting, writing, puzzling, knitting, cooking. Seeing colors and mixtures, textures, shapes, and words afresh, instinctively choosing them, aligning them, letting them lead her back to who she once was. Remembering who I was before me; or perhaps seeing me before I, except after C. Rules no longer apply.

The post Rules No Longer Apply appeared first on Abigail Carter.

Another year has ended, along with a relationship and a dream. I am here wallowing once again in the ashes of my life. I flop around in the dust lamenting in the should’ves, could’ves, would’ves, those monkeys in my brain running wild.

I am alone now in Firestation #33, alone for the first time in my life, and I wander her halls of broken dreams and think sad thoughts. But I don’t want sadness here. I want fun and joy and life. So I’m trying to pick myself up, dust myself off and continue into the New Year, destination unknown.

Grief has taught me how to stand up and dust off and how to keep going, no matter how much I really just want to curl into a small ball and hide from the world. It takes vast effort, but the choice is mine and I’m choosing to stand up. Again.

I want to pick a fun route, one that would appeal to the child in me, who seeks playfulness and fun and joy and laughter. On my list of things I want to do this year:

painttravel to Balivisit friends in New Yorkwriteset up a painting studiodance and yogadrink lots of tealaughsimplify

OK, universe. The course it set. 3…2…1!

My first painting in 35 years

The post A New Year, A New Life appeared first on Abigail Carter.

I met Joyce for the first time at the Marysville Starbucks, just off the highway. Jim and I were on a return trip from visiting my family in Vancouver. She wore a flowery shirt, a heavy pink lanyard of keys around her neck and had a twinkle in her eye as she greeted her son, the first time I’d ever heard anyone call him “Jimmy.” She insisted on paying for our drinks but didn’t drink her coffee, preferring to wait until it cooled and she and Jimmy began an extensive conversation about the state of her Samsung cellphone.

I learned some fundamental things about Joyce in that first meeting:

She avoided extremes of temperature
She was not a fan of technology
She never lost her keys
She was incredibly generous
She dearly loved her son

Over the years of knowing her, I pieced together parts of her life, her early life in Marysville working at a bank, the pride she took in her work, her marriage to “The Colonel” and her admiration of him, but what she most liked to talk about was her time as a mother.

I recognized some similarities we shared – that, like me, she was essentially a single mother, with The Colonel often absent, it was up to her to manage the household, lively with active kids, dogs, cats, and snakes, usually in far-flung locations. She was in charge of moving the entire entourage every 18 months to yet another unfamiliar destination.

Despite the constant stress and uncertainty of that era, those times were her favorite topics of conversation. It would be easy to attribute the frequency of her stories to a kind of trauma she experienced during all those moves, but I suspect everyone in the room knows that she spoke of those times so frequently because her mother-years were some of the pinnacle moments of her life and for that, I always admired her.

Over the last couple of years, I was lucky enough to be a frequent visitor in her life, driving her to the places she needed to go, dropping off rotisserie chickens, calming her in moments of stress. She shared with me her love of the Mariners, listening to every game on AM radio and I teased her whenever the Blue Jays played with a “Go Jays!” text. She regaled me with tales of her beloved James Paxton, the Canadian Mariner’s pitcher, assuming that I too must love him given our shared nationality. She never failed to tell me about the maple trees planted within the Mariner’s stadium in honor of his no-hitter this past summer. She was always trying to stuff $20 bills into my hand to cover some minor expense, or helping to wash windows at our firehouse. I learned invaluable tips from Joyce, particularly in the art of stain removal which took my skills in that department to a whole new level.

One of my fondest memories will be the day I painted windows as she sat nearby regaling me with stories of her childhood in Marysville, the piano lessons, her mother’s arthritic hands, her father’s old car, a beautiful doll she once owned. That day, I saw the young, beautiful girl she was, the giggles, the happy smile, the innocence. I think that young girl remained a large part of who she was, and that was her charm.

The world often seemed to overwhelm that young girl and I wonder if perhaps her stories became a coping mechanism, a way of remaining in a simpler time. As a story-teller myself, I value the power of our stories to make sense of our worlds.

I am going to miss those giggles and those lit up eyes when presented with something she loved, be it a tiny flashlight, a kind gesture or a day with her children and grandchildren. I will never forget that way she would deconstruct a sandwich before eating it. Joyce’s way in the world reminded us to take pleasure in the little moments, to reduce things to their simplest elements, to find solace in our stories, to be generous to a fault and to love hard the people nearest and dearest to us.

 

 

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The post Joyce Ellen Evans appeared first on Abigail Carter.

Arriving in Tuscany, I felt like a wild child, slurping up sights and smells and colors and texture the way a kid might eat an ice cream cone, inconsistently licking one side, while the colors melted in drips down to the elbows, smeared across the face, sticky and sweet. A stick shift Fiat, circling wild roundabouts in Firenze, careening free into a tidy countryside punctuated with even rows and lines and dots and trees, up steep slopes and down again, creating patterns across the landscape like knitted practice triangles of green wooly felts and fabrics. Dotted within this tapestry were houses the color of butter and marigolds and buttercups or ones built of thick rectangular stones, threaded with ochres and rust and bone. Tiny windows within towers conjured images of imprisoned princesses in billowing dresses made of jewel-toned velvet.

The smell of spring flowers was mixed with dust and fir with a finish of olive-y headiness.

Fiat and I bumped along roads created from chunks of ancient shale and dust, pitted and undulating and weaving us into a rhythm of the place until we reached a tall spiky gate, within which was another tower, a courtyard, the up-close tapestry of stakes and vines and silvery olive trees tidy as a line of saluting soldiers.

And then a whirl of colorful dresses and suitcases and greetings and perfumes and puppies and cool, frescoed rooms and stone floors that defied the sound of our footsteps. And overwhelming awe and a desire to gobble down the ice cream cone all at once, but the knowledge that it will be savored over an entire week.

And savored, we have. There are no words to describe the experiences we shared, our new sisterhood. Lavanaya, our fearless guide on this journey explained that trying to relay the experience to friends and family would be like showing the beauty of a rose by plucking off each petal. It can’t be done and so I won’t try. These words will need to suffice.

The ice cream experience became a reality during a quick afternoon in Florence, eating gelato (twice!), becoming that kid not just devouring the gelato, but also the statues, the people, the colors, the smells. I bought a ring, a flower created from a pearl surrounded by 11 (seriously?) moonstones. I drank Aperol on the terrace of The Savoy Hotel with my new Tuscan sisters, rejoicing them and lamenting them at once. How to say goodbye?

The week has flown by in a warm breeze of smell and color and food and tears and friendship and love and fearlessness and dancing and skinny dipping and pushing ourselves to an edge we didn’t know existed. I have been looking for this edge, knowing it was out there, and learning recently that sometimes you must go past the edge to be able to then turn and see it. This has been a week of going past the edge. An experience for which words are inadequate.

During my homeward bound stopover in Paris, unable to find the M gates, I met an equally lost South Korean man returning to Kansas where he was studying law. He’d been Berlin where he’d attended the concert of a woman he loved. As we each fumbled our way through another security checkpoint, he told me the story of his father who had fled North Korea, a heartbreaking story of lost love, and a journey back to North Korea fifty years later only to find his wife had died 6 months prior. He told me of his love for the violinist, the beautiful things he did for her, despite the love not being reciprocal. Loving her regardless was a choice he was certain in. I was struck by this man’s and this man’s father’s incredible ability to love despite all odds and hardships.

In the craziness of my arrival back in the states, in the hot International entry hall, I pulled off clothing and only when I reached home did I realize I had lost the ring. An odd heartbreak for an object I only possessed for less than 24 hours.

What I have found on this trip is the reminder that to go deep requires letting go of resistance, dropping barriers, feeling pain, releasing emotions in all their ugliness, loving with a full heart despite the risks. But mostly what I was reminded (as I am again and again) was to savor every fleeting moment.

I will not soon forget this week, my new soul sisters, my ring, DJ, my stopover friend. Deep connections can come over the course of a week, or over a 45-minute stopover if you are willing to allow the colors drip to your elbows and let the magic in, with gratitude.

 

Ca' di Pesa from the pool Ca' di Pesa tower through the olive trees. My bedroom [image error] Ca' di Pesa bathroom widow Field tapestry Back gate at Ca' di Pesa Joanne and Caitlyn in Panzano [image error] Winery - structure [image error] House birds Ab in Panzano Dante caught in the act [image error] The bulls of
Festa Della Stagion Bona [image error] The actors of
Festa Della Stagion Bona Life and death in parade With Nirmala [image error] Perfume shop in Florence A Savoy farewell [image error] At the Cathedral of Saint Crocce Incredible pizza dinner [image error] Tuscan sisters with Dante [image error] Last morning With Lavanya [image error] Shop in Florence Glove shop in Florence The ring

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Oh, dear blog, how neglected are thee? It’s been 6 months since my last confession episode.

In this episode of The Firehouse Chronicles, the final episode, pictures are worth a thousand words…

The video tour:

The Gallery (click on photo for larger version):

Grapefruit tree in Abby's Office Abby's Office Abby's Office Downstairs Hall [image error] Stables/Carter's Bedroom Stables/Carter's Bedroom Downstairs bathroom Apparatus Bay, with Catalina Kitchen [image error] The pantry - exterior The pantry - interior The spice drawer Upstairs Hall Entry [image error] Dining Room Seating [image error] Living room seating [image error] Bar Living room looking towards kitchen Upstairs Hallway [image error] Bathroom/Laundry Hayloft Bedroom [image error] Hayloft Bedroom

A couple of fun things happened. We decorated Carter’s room by hoisting his motorcycle into the ceiling.

And Jim programmed Alexa to do a fun, fancy trick:

I won’t lie, I’m kinda of sad our project is more or less done. Of course, there will be lots of little projects from here on out, but nothing we do will ever match the scale of restoring the firehouse.

It’s been an amazing journey. Thank you for joining us.

The post The Firehouse Chronicles – The Finale appeared first on Abigail Carter.

She labors in her breathing, her chest makes the sound of a tea kettle boiled dry. Unconsciousness is a mercy. I read her the poems sent to her by her Facebook friends, fellow poets who, over the years have buoyed each other upon the strength of words. The outpouring of love for her shows up in the form of comments and poems. Her influence through words travels continents.

Two days ago, I read her a poem, “Dragonfly,” by David Seter and she awoke from her slumber and smiled.

“Oh, you liked that one, did you?”  I asked. “Shall I read it again?” She nodded. I read it three times.

The next day, I read another, “Persimmons” which elicited a slight smile behind closed eyes. But she was unable to nod when I asked if she liked it.

Today I read Persimmons again over the rattle of her shallow breaths and there was no response whatsoever. I hope, somewhere deep within her consciousness she hears the words and they comfort her.

Why, I wonder, can’t they just give her a full dropper of morphine? Or two? I know this is not how she wanted to spend her last days.

I met Kay ten years ago at a Friday morning coffee shop writing group. She, a poet, armed herself with a non-fat latte, a blue paper bag of Swiss chocolate truffles, a journal and a pen. While the rest of us typed onto our computers, Kay filled notebooks with her loopy script, regaling us with her words after our allotted 45 minutes of writing. Sometimes she wrote about a person, artwork or street scene near where we sat; sometimes she wrote about a bad relationship; sometimes she wrote from a prompt she’d seen that morning. When Trump was elected, her poems became angry diatribes, her disgust for the man, plain. She read her poems in a catchy monotone, each line no more, or no less significant than the last.

Over the years, though her poetry, I learned her story. She’d had a son at 17 and left home. She’d made ends meet as a stripper. She went back to school and got a degree. She worked for many years in an administrative role at the University of Washington. She’d spent her childhood summers with her grandparents on a farm on the Wenatchee River and had several disastrous relationships with men. She lived with her nephew, was like a mother to him, since he was unable to fully function in the world.

She wrote often of her loneliness.

I helped her publish a volume of her work for a poetry festival she attended in Ireland. I learned more of her story through her poems as I laid out each page, designed a cover featuring a photo of her in her bouffant-stripper days, and had the book published in time for her trip. During her time in Ireland, she read her poems in pubs and bookstores and sold copies of her book.

Upon her return from Ireland, she was absent from several Friday groups. I eventually learned she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. When she reappeared at the cafe one Friday, I asked if I could be of any help. I had, in the past, after she broke her arm, ferried her back and forth to our writing group. I offered to do so again, an offer she took me up on.

Chemo began her treatment regimen, once a week for 5 weeks. I couldn’t leave her to sit through chemo alone, so I sat with her and became proficient at chemo jokes involving “cocktails.” There were frequent doctor’s appointments and I started accompanying her on those as well, as a second set of ears to what was happening. I got a crash course in small-cell lung cancer. It’s a type of cancer that has a high incidence of metastisizing to the brain, so once chemo was done, radiation of the brain was next. Radiation was every day for 3 weeks, a break, and repeat. They gave us a tag for the dashboard of my car that allowed us to park for free, close to the hospital.

For the first Women’s March in Seattle, in January 2017, she was disappointed not to be able to join in, so I knit her a pussy hat, which she loved and wore throughout her treatment which lasted until June. In the car back and forth, we’d have long conversations about the state of politics and I worried about Trump’s effect on her health.

[image error]Pussy Power! Jan 31st, 2017

Each day, I’d pick her up, carrying her purse and walker as she clung to the rail and eased herself down three flights of steps, across the broken concrete of her crumbling apartment complex to my car.  I’d settle her into my front seat, fold her walker into my trunk and we’d be off. We’d do the waiting room puzzles and meet with the oncologist who grew increasingly agitated at her decline. She didn’t heed his recommendations to get out of the house and walk, preferring the comfort of her worn recliner in front of the TV. In her nicotine-yellowed apartment, thick layers of dust coated book-filled shelving that groaned under the weight, a collection of frogs lined every surface. The carpet was patterned with cigarette burns. I dared not enter the kitchen.

Eventually, as predicted, the cancer in her lungs became a glioblastoma of the brain, an incurable and terminal disease. Ironically, the lung cancer was gone. Seizures in her right arm, resulted in several late-night ambulance trips to the ER. The first couple of times, she was admitted to the Neuro unit where I’d visit her, armed with non-fat lattes and blue bags of chocolate truffles. The ER visits became more frequent, so I’d arrive and calm her and simply drive her home again, since the neuro unit had no cure on offer.

The seizures left her right hand debilitated, unable to write, rendering the poet wordless. This was her true death.

Twice, after her neuro ward visits, she underwent gamma knife surgery to zap several tiny lesions in her brain. She was strapped into a helmet that made her look like a character from a Dr. Who episode.

“Take me to your leader,” she’d joke.

Dr. Who?

For some reason, cancer in the brain is not a “tumor” but a “lesion.” I pictured her brain filled with tiny canker sores, their edges white, holes gaping.

Soon, the three flights of stairs to her recliner were an impossible obstacle and the social workers got her into hospice. I was relieved. Now she could eat proper meals, get help moving and be assured of taking the proper medications.

But it also meant no more gamma ray surgery, no more doctor’s appointments. No more treatment. This death thing was getting real.

I kept up with the dark humor, often leaving her room saying, “you’re doing a great job dying, Kay!” or arrive asking “how’s the dying going, Kay?” It always made her laugh. The truth was, she WAS doing a good job dying. She was putting her affairs in order, making sure her nephew was taken care of. His angel of a step-sister would be moving him into her home where he would have his own room, new clothes, a proper diet and enforced bathing.

I facilitated a meeting with her son, with whom she’d been estranged for sixteen years. I did not ask the reason for their estrangement, just sat as they spoke. He told her loved her, but was unable to provide the hug she so desperately longed for.

We talked openly about how she wanted to die: quick and dignified. The nice thing about hospice is that the “no heroic measures” directive is built-in.

Her first month in the hospice care unit, her goal was to organize a final poetry reading.

“If I can just make it to the 19th,” she said, “I’ll have done everything I need to do.”

“Of course you’ll make it to the 19th,” I said. She seemed a long way from death to me then. It seemed she had many months to live.

For the reading, she invited her old poetry group to read with her and they read to an audience of assisted living residents, many in wheelchairs or with walkers parked beside them. She was happy about her performance and enjoyed seeing her old friends.

A few days after the reading, she became muddled. She complained about prune juice and suppositories and a mystery man who was harassing her. She complained about two sisters caring for their mother who, in their meanness, forced their mother’s wonderful personal caregiver to quit. She was convinced they had taken away her “hat,” a Christmas headband sporting snowman antlers.

[image error] Kay’s “Silly Hat” – Dec 22, 2017.

“I know I can just tell them No!” she said. “I can always say no.” She might have been talking about the nurses giving her suppositories, the sisters or the mystery man. I kept asking who this mystery man was that bothered her, thinking he was someone she sat with during meals, but she couldn’t tell me. One day, it dawned on me that the man she was so angry with was Trump. She knew she was angry at a man, but couldn’t remember who.

One day, I sat with her and held her hand. She seemed agitated and upset, but couldn’t express her feelings.

“You’ve been very brave, Kay,” I said. “You know, everything is taken care of now. Mark is living with his sister, I have your apartment cleared out, all your notebooks and writing stuff will be going to the University of Washington the way you wanted.”

She nodded her agreement.

“Kay, if you’re ready, it’s OK to let go now. Everyone is going to be OK. You don’t need to worry anymore.”

She nodded again. I hugged and kissed her goodbye that night and hoped she understood. Within two days of that conversation, I had a call from the head nurse.

“She’s becoming much more confused. This is the course we’ve been expecting. She will likely become more sleepy as the swelling in her brain increases. You might want to begin notifying family members, as I don’t think it will be much longer now.”

Her decline has been rapid and exactly one month from her last poetry reading, she lies struggling to breathe through her death rattle. I hold her hand and wish for a quick end. I have spent a year and a half caring for her, becoming her daughter in many ways, taking over her finances, being the point person for her care. I never imagined, back when I offered to drive her to a chemo appointment, that I would be the one sitting at her bedside watching her die, but I couldn’t be more honored to be doing so.

Arron’s death was so metaphysical and abstract. I saw no body, had no ashes to sprinkle. Witnessing death up close is a very different thing. I’ve learned I have little fear of death, something I’ve been aware of since Arron died. I hope I’ve managed to infuse Kay with some of my fearlessness towards death, and have eased her journey just a little. I hope in some tiny way, I’ve paid forward some of the love and support I’ve received through the years after Arron’s death, and that it won’t be my last opportunity to do so.

Rest easy, my dear Kay. It’s been an honor to know you and walk this journey with you. Your words remain. Immortalizing you.

A Day in the Life of the Poet

by Kay Kinghammer

She is

Mourning in the morning,

Sad at six,

Sorrowful at seven,

Elegiac at eight,

Nostalgic at nine,

Troubled at ten,

Morose at midmorning,

Edgy at eleven,

Numb at noon,

Obsessive at one,

Tense at two,

Terrified at three,

Angry in the afternoon,

Furious at four,

Fevered at five,

Sanctimonious at six,

Sardonic at seven,

Teary in the twilight,

Eager at eight,

Nervous at nine,

Tender at ten,

Earthy and easy at eleven,

Aware and awake and alone at midnight,

Naked in the night.

 

Pay Attention

by Kay Kinghammer

Molecules, designed to be mysterious,

Fulfill their function, build a model,

Make an atom, cleave together, pulled

By a strong force, do-si-do in universal

Eternal dance. Everything dances together,

Window and air, souls shedding bodies,

Frame and glass, eyes and sight and view.

You and I, witnessing miracles happening,

Over and over, sigh, each to the other,

“Pay attention, this moment may never return.”

The post The Silencing of a Poet appeared first on Abigail Carter.

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

The day after our party, Jim begins tearing into electrical in plumbing and building the cabinet boxes for the kitchen. The cabinets arrived a few weeks prior, forklifted into the apparatus bay in large, flat boxes. Each box is hauled to the living room and attic, makeshift assembly stations. I run around with complicated lists, trying to figure out which box holds which cabinet and marking on a plan where each cabinet goes. It’s like IKEA assembly hell on steroids.  We should be used to our usual fallacy of assuming that a project will be completed in two weeks, but the summer passes before we’re ready to install the cabinets.

Jim works furiously and is in a constant state of exhaustion. Every outlet, plumbing reconfiguration, and cabinet placement seems to uncover unforeseen issues, leading to new projects. Hooking up the kitchen plumbing means moving other pipes, or updating them. I help where I can – using “Miroslav” (an oscillating tool whose high-pitched whine sounds like a Russian “Niet”) to cut holes in cabinets for electrical outlets. I paint while Jim swears, squished deep inside base cabinets, or high on a ladder working above his head in the ceiling of the floor below. Finally, in late August, the kitchen is ready to receive its countertops. Months prior, I toured a granite and marble warehouse, brushing my fingers across huge cold surfaces. On display was a huge gorgeous slab of Carrera marble, whose surface, when I touched it was like velvet.

On installation day, five Turkish Russians climb out of a Prius to help the two installers who arrived in the truck to unload 700 lb slabs of marble and granite onto the scissor lift, then up and into the kitchen. Once again, we marvel at our luck at having the scissor lift. As Jim presses the button to lift the heaviest slab, the marble for the island, he has to banish two of the guys who have clambered onto the lift for the ride. We have finally found the maximum weight the lift is willing to haul. A few hours later, the counters are in, gleaming in the sunlight taking our breath away.

 

I have bought faucets and Jim’s provided an instant hot water system, touting its virtues, both of which are ready for the installers to drill holes for. The installers quickly note that the handles from the faucet won’t clear the hot water faucet, something we hadn’t considered. It’s another two weeks before I can exchange the hot water faucet and get the installers back to drill the holes and install them.

In late August, I travel to San Diego to speak at Camp Widow and then fly with Carter to Arizona to help him move into his dorm and begin his freshman year of college. A few weeks later, we all meet in Toronto for my brother’s wedding. Stupidly, I have set late September for move day, so amidst all the traveling, I am also trying to prepare my house for the move and subsequent sale. I have contracted with a stager who wants the house painted a “staging” grey color. He walks around and tells me which pieces of furniture he wants to use for staging and I hire a mover to move the rest. I post many items on NextDoor and take bags and bags of stuff to Goodwill. Slowly, the house begins to empty. I measure couches and tables, working out places for them at the firehouse.

My brother Matt marries his awesome bride, Meg on September 9th and we furiously work to get as much done before flying to Toronto for the wedding. The day before we leave, I scrape paint out of my hair and off my elbows after a mad attempt to paint pantry shelves. I will need places to put things when we move in, only 10 days later.

I spend those 10 days after returning from Toronto dashing from house to house, packing one and cleaning the other. Moving day arrives and things disappear at a furious pace. By 2 pm, boxes and furniture litter the firehouse, the movers paid and gone, so I begin tackling the kitchen unpacking. Later that evening, Jim opens a bottle of Prosecco. We lounge on the gigantic couch that never fit properly at my other house but fits like it was made for the firehouse. We toast, our excitement palatable.

[image error] Filling the new pantry… with a lot of oatmeal!

Later that evening, Olivia arrives, bringing the last of her stuff and her cat from the other house. “Kitten,” released from his carrier, slinks around the house, sniffing new smells. Olivia emphatically insists that Kitten not be allowed to go outside so he can become acclimated to his new home. Newly relocated cats are notorious for disappearing after moves in their attempts to return to the old home. Kitten soon disappears upstairs, where he’s in cat heaven, sniffing out all the old rat nests that Jim uncovered (and attempted to fumigate) when the floor and walls were removed relocating various mechanicals. Olivia disappears to her new room, excited to begin unpacking.

Before heading to bed, I let Chloe out to do her business. She disappears into the darkness and I leave the door open a crack for her to come back in. A couple of minutes later, she returns, and I close the door, only then realizing that the door has been open. I freeze. Have I just inadvertently let the cat out? I haven’t seen him go out, so I go upstairs and begin looking. There is no trace of him. I debate telling Olivia, knowing it will not go well. I’m not certain he escaped outside, but neither can I find him.

In the end, I tell her since it seems the right thing to do. Olivia panics, angry and devastated at once. She runs outside, calling his name through tears. Jim and I head to bed, uncertain what we can do, other than to wait for Kitten to return. Lying in bed, we hear what sounds like Kitten feet on the roof. Realizing that an attic window, high up in the eaves, 8 feet above the floor may also be a Kitten escape route, we head to the attic. Jim sets a ladder against to the window and manages to squeeze his torso outside to look at the roof which is incredibly steep and high. He struggles for a few minutes to get free of the window and finally belly-scrapes his way out. He heads downstairs and looks at the roof from outside. There is no sign of Kitten anywhere.

We all eventually go to bed, knowing there is nothing more we can do. Olivia is distraught and angry.

The next morning, I awake early to the sound of a slight scratching from the ceiling above us. Kitten has never left the attic, the hunt for a long-gone rat enemy in full swing.

[image error] Chloe and Kitten, unaware of all the drama they have caused.

The next day, I go to my house to meet up with the home stagers, my new nightmare. The original bid has suddenly doubled in price since I failed to notice it didn’t include the movers (which is baffling). They swarm the house, hauling in one awful piece of furniture after another. Items the stager asked me to leave are now discarded and I’m forced to pay my movers to come back a second time. The following day, the stager’s job complete, Jim and I are confronted with a whole roomful of discarded furniture that we haul back to the firehouse on our own.

The end result is a house that seems dark and dreary and is filled with nothing but various seating areas.

The house goes on the market the following day, and I am dismayed by the asking price which is far below what I expected it would be. We hope that a bidding war will inch the price up a little. We set the bid day for a week out, and when it comes, we receive two bids: one for asking price and one for well below asking price. I am stunned. Is the “hot Seattle real estate market” just a media myth? I can’t help feeling emotionally crushed. Was I doing the right thing by selling? Should I have somehow found a way to hang on to the house, even though it had become financially unfeasible? Jim patiently talks me through all the potential scenarios: waiting until the spring; renting; Airbnb-ing. He astutely points out that none of these options would pan out financially, and I’d be taking a risk. The market might soften.

In the end, I accept the asking price offer. It leaves me feeling emotional, but I try not to let it damper my excitement over finally moving into the firehouse.

The first couple of nights, we are freezing, since it is unseasonably cold and we still have no heat. Jim finds himself back on the ladder, dealing with cracked 100-year-old pipes, stringing new piping high in the rafters and once again lamenting his role as head contractor/handyman. But soon the floors are warm for the first time and it is glorious.

We spend the next couple of weeks unpacking and tweaking kitchen drawer placements. We make a couple of trips to IKEA (Jim’s new favorite lunch spot) and I spend my birthday putting together a new set of drawers so I have a place to put all my clothes. It goes a little like this. Jim, finally free of house projects (for now), gives his apparatus bay a museum quality tidy and he becomes little-kid-like in his excitement to finally be home.

[image error] IKEA: Swedish for f*ck you.
Jim’s very own Museum of Flight.

 

 

The post THE FIREHOUSE CHRONICLES – EPISODE 16 appeared first on Abigail Carter.

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

And now a leap ahead in time…

In setting a date for a party, we impose upon ourselves a much-needed deadline, but somehow the project scope creeps to higher and higher levels. The stables floor goes from needing a couple of temporary sheets of plywood, to becoming fully radiant heated and tiled. A simple bathroom gets a steam bath, two shower heads and is tiled in marble, the hayloft floor goes from being a simple project to one involving a trip to Port Townsend for reclaimed wood, a full sanding with rented machine and four gradations of sandpaper and then four coats of polyurethane. The days before the party, the paint sprayer is set up and while I tape everything off, Jim sprays the entire interior of the house. We are exhausted and Jim becomes prone to bouts of irritability.

[image error] Chloe inspects the reclaimed wood in my Prius pickup truck.

During this time, I take Carter to see colleges and he makes his decision, goes to prom and graduates high school, while Olivia graduates from college, suffers heartbreak and returns home. It becomes clear that the empty nest is not to be, at least for now as Olivia makes plans to move to the firehouse with us, and this shifts the dynamic of the move for me and Jim. I walk a thin tightrope between wanting to provide a safe haven for my kids while they are still in school and assuring Jim that they won’t be still living with us when they are 40. While he’s happy for them to live with us, he worries that the same dynamic between me and the kids that makes him feel like a guest at my house will be replicated at the firehouse.

Our conversations go in circles. He would like me to create an “if this, then that,” decision tree, spelling out all of the possible scenarios and our reaction to them, but I am incapable of making decisions based on things that haven’t happened yet. And yet I see his point, and realize I need do a better job of setting expectations with the kids. I try to make it clear to them that they are always welcome, that they will always have a safe haven if they need it or while they are in school, but that the expectation is for them to find jobs and places of their own. Jim worries that we are making the nest too comfortable and that it is being built to their specifications rather than ours.

The days before the party are a little tense between us and he heads off on a shift, to return the morning of the party, so I spend long 12 hour days cleaning and getting things ready.

The morning of the party, we decide on a breakfast date, so I make my way to the firehouse to meet up with him. We start discussing what needs to get done before people arrive and as we’re talking, he throws the ball for Chloe. She sprints after it and then returns to drop it at my feet, so I kick it back to Jim to throw again. Instead he picks the ball up and starts pulling at a strap that seems to be attached to it. I assume he’s gotten Chloe some new fangled Chuck It ball that has a tug strap attached. He detaches the strap from the ball and begins to untie a knot at the end of it. I’m thinking that it’s kind of a cool invention, to make a ball with a detachable tug strap, until he holds out a delicate ring with a sparkly diamond on it. It takes me a second, as I am still thinking about the cool Chuck It ball. He’s laughing at me as he asks me to marry him. I weep as I say yes.

The kids meet us at our favorite breakfast spot, have been waiting for the call, have been in on the plan. They have all done a great job of keeping the secret. I was completely unaware.

[image error] On the way to breakfast, newly engaged.

Jim is still hanging a light fixture when people start arriving at the party, which started out as a birthday/graduation/1 yr house anniversary party and ended up an engagement party.

And now I’ve almost caught up with real time. Next up is the kitchen remodel, but I’ll leave that for next time.

Julyne, my biggest fan, has been begging for a video of the house, so here you go:

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