Boring Rainbow

It’s a dip in time, a few days around All Saints where ghosts intermingle with friends and food, when some say that the veil between the spiritual side and the dense side is thin, and your friends and family can reach you.

That was early November and, I guess, also on birthdays.

Here’s a funny story: I asked my stepdad, who is long gone into the ether, to text me. We were listening to a podcast about those who text and email from the other side so, after parking the car in the driveway and as the rain hit us from all sides, and then the hail came, I texted him. It had been a year since the last text, at least.

I now carry a one-sided conversation with my stepdad, where I write him tiny texts once-in-awhile and, if I scroll back, I can see where he texted me. I only text him little lines and only now and then because I don’t want it to look so one-sided. If there’s only a little from me, then it seems like we were talking recently and like it was just the other day that he was alive and well.

It was so quiet in the car and so loud all around us, as my child and I sat there and witnessed, and experienced, the hail.

I can send him texts but photos won’t go through. And for some reason, it seems, no one has his number yet. Or someone does and they’re kind.

The hail beat the moonroof and I put my palm on the glass; it was cold, and vibrated with the weight of it. And I texted him about the podcast and asked him to text me back.

Before he passed, he sent me photos of artwork from a trip with some art buddies to see the Rodins, the galleries, the shows.

“Rodin originals,” he wrote, and sent me this picture:

I told him later, as I walked my dog up the hill to my house, to contact me. To figure it out. I said that if he didn’t, I would find him. I’d meditate and go into the spirit world, somehow, and make it happen… but it would be better if he learned already.

And then that night my imessage went crazy. My password wasn’t recognized, new computers and iphones were being added to my account and yet they weren’t, my phone said I wasn’t in a place it didn’t recognize, though I was at my kitchen table with my family, my son playing Minecraft with his cousin a state away.

My brother, who guided me through the mess said, “it’s like someone’s toggling imessage on and off.”

Was that him?

Baked bread, LEGO, pain.

I hurt my wrist beyond belief.

The doctor handed me a brace and said to wear it 24/7 while, same day, my husband flew to Montreal. Because we do these things.

So I sat down to the lonely piano and tried to play the left side only, when I was desperate to play. The house was kind of cold and quiet.

I have two songs: the Barcarolle and that prelude that Chopin wrote while he was dying. One time my husband made me stop playing and said it was too sad. I still haven’t figured out the tricky part.

And everyone, imho, plays the song too fast.

(David says I play the song too slow; all songs too slow.)

To have a cup of tea, my young child had to cut open the package with adult scissors for me. I wondered at how to make dinner without lifting a pot of water. I had totally lost the utility of my wrist due to the great malfeasance of age; we age and we lose our abilities to do the things, I think. I told everyone it was age and they laughed but I know better. Kind laughter.

Then my sweet, honey child had a fever so I made him bread with the machine, leaving it in the hallway as I was unable to lift it. So we enjoyed bread made on the floor, in a way.

And I opened the curtain and, after staying in with a sick child who cuts open my rose tea bags, I thought about how sequestered we were. No one knew where we were, what we were doing, and the day was lost.

I would have seen my friend Bryce. Our neighbor texted and said “come over and have a glass of wine.”

We weren’t alone-alone but we were totally alone, and I cried while trying to put butter on a knife. I was a mess of strength and tears. The tears are only mom tears where you’ve been up all night and you can no longer play your piano or ply a knife with spreadable butter.

Chopin’s handwriting looked like this:

This tiny piece of music was found nearly a hundred years after his last song was discovered. Like a text message through time; one that only works when you play it. A gif.

After Chopin died, his heart was preserved in alcohol and built into the wall of a church.

And then time passed, and it was my birthday. Mid-month, way beyond the tide of veils thinning and spiritual notes being delivered, and I never got that text message. But then–

My mom and I walked into my house and the light over the door decided to strobe on us, blinking on and off erratically, oddly, weirdly, and I turned it off, then back on again, and it kept up it’s crazy-making strobe light so I flicked it off and said,

“Hey Mom, watch: OK, Rick! Thank You! I got the Birthday Message!” then I flicked the light back on and

It was fine.

It’s been a week now and the light has, of course, stayed serene, calm, always on, never a flicker.

He figured something out at last.

Every year for my birthday I ask a psychic three questions. And this year, one of my questions was “Was that Rick?” to which she said:

“Yes, that WAS Rick. You intuited that it was him because it WAS him. The blinking stopped because, as you said, you received the message- he accomplished his goal.”

Chopin Nocturne, Op. 62 No. 1. I wonder what he scratched out.

This week is a puddle for me, where I wondered what my purpose was, and I compared myself to the vast, vast world, wondering why I couldn’t measure up to the cups of my friends and dreams.

But here, ladies and gentlemen, is a tiny blog showing the world that though we may be caught up in curtains and fevers and alone in the wild everything, we are still here, and we still write, and “though I am small, I can do big things.”

As says so beautifully, Morris the Mole.