In Memorium: Go Forth Ed and Be in Peace

Go Forth Ed and Be in Peace
September 24, 1958-
September 26, 2020
Pic taken at the Longview
Go Fourth celebration
July 3, 2017

I've been sitting here for over an hour gazing at the pictures I chose for this momentous post but the words just won't come.

Maybe if I stop trying to tap into profound and just go with straightforward.

Just the facts man.

Ed's neighbors called in a wellness check on him Monday because no one had seen him out and about all weekend.

They found his body around 1:30pm.  Coroner estimates death as Saturday morning.

Thursday was his 62nd birthday.

I got the news roundabout.  

It was his sister in Southern Oregon who got the call from the Cowlitz County, WA coroner and she gave him her two brother's numbers Darrel in Southern Oregon and Don in Longview WA.  Darrel's wife Sara messaged me via fb messenger just before 2pm that it was urgent that I call her.  

I was still supervising Mom's lunch so I messaged that I would phone as soon as I could turn Mom's beeper over to someone else. 

That took nearly fifteen minutes to arrange which gave me enough time to connect the dots.  

It could only be bad news about someone in the family.  But Ed's mom had passed away September 2nd and no one hesitated to inform me by text.  So even if it was about his Dad or one of his siblings or their kids surely they would just message me.

So I knew before I knew that my worst nightmare had come to pass.

My blood flowed like icy-hot champagne as I took Mom's tray to the kitchen, brought her a damp cloth to clean her hands and then tracked my sister down out in the yard to tell her Mom was done with lunch and I had a message from Sarah that it was urgent that I call.

I held the home phone for what seemed forever but probably was only a minute before I started punching the numbers in as I read them off my computer screen.  My fingers fumbled and my eyes blurred tho not with tears yet just the stress.  I'm visually impaired and sometimes just a mood shift can mess with my ability to focus.

Not just my eyes either, my mind wants to go out of focus as well, which is probably due to the sensory processing issues related to autism.

Sara's first words confirmed my guess.

Joy I'm soooo sorry to have to tell you this over the phone...

Darrel got a call from the coroner...

They found Ed's body...

Neighbors...

Wellness check...

Estimated time of death early Saturday.

Early Saturday?  OMG. Could that mean there was something more than silly memory processing involved with that dream that woke me up two hours before my alarm Saturday?

That's when the tears started and the full body tremble and chattering teeth.  I wanted to fall back into the memory of that dream right then and there but I forced myself to stay grounded until Sarah and I had each said what needed to be said.

And yet a bit longer to break the news to my sister and my mom.

Then I was free to relive it.

Just a vivid dream or a visitation?:

Something swooped up from behind.  A single strong arm gripped me around the shoulders and swung me up in the air and around into a face-to-face dancing position. The face was Ed's from circa 1985--mid twenties. 

He was smiling a full on, hold nothing back happy smile.  Displaying a mouthful of healthy teeth which he'd not had for at least three decades.

His face glowed.

No, seriously.  It was lit from within and was the source of the light that lit the landscape.

We were in a grove of trees but our heads were above all but a few of the tallest.

We wobbled in the air like a kite flown by a very young child.

I looked down at my feet and the ground that was yards below them and that's when I noticed his feet were still on the ground but blocks or miles away and the wobble was due to his trying to walk over hills and logs with legs that were long, long ribbons of taffy that were getting longer and thinner by the nanosecond.

I realized we were about to either tumble to the ground or float up into the clouds.

His joy was contagious and I felt myself surrendering to it.

I wanted more than anything to float or fly away with him.

But that delirium lasted only for a moment

Or three

Until it occurred to me that this was an undoing of all the emotional work I'd done in the last three months to unmesh my emotional thermometer from the influence of his; to learn to feel my own feelings without needing his permission, acknowledgement or approval.  

Was he always going to be able to jive talk me this easy?

Not that he was talking.  Yet I knew what he wanted.

He wanted me to join him in this ecstasy.

(This latest fantasy?)

As if to confirm that thought he put his other arm around me and gripped me in one of his signature bear hugs.

Oh how I'd been missing those hugs.  The last one was the goodbye hug after our last weekend together in mid March before our household began sheltering in place to protect my elderly mother.

I wanted to hug him back but my arms were trapped against his chest.

I wanted to snuggle my head under his chin and say

"Let's go."

But instead I pushed my elbows into his ribs and leaned back until I could meet his eyes and asked
"Have you been drinking?"

And we tumbled to the ground which felt like falling on piles of pillows on a trampoline.

We bounced and rolled apart as he let go and as I watched he morphed into a cartoon figure of a giant toddler in a giggle fit.

Whatever this is, I thought (or maybe he was thinking it into me)
"This is better than booze"

Then he winked out and the light went with him.

I opened my eyes to a window lit by pale dawn-light hours before my 9am alarm was to go off.

I never got back to sleep but I remained in a dislocated state of mind until late afternoon or longer and well into another big sort and organize project. 

So was that just a vivid dream representing the mental and emotional sorting out I'd been doing?  Or did Ed's spirit visit me on his way out of this world an hour or so after dawn? 

___________

I'm going to close this out with part of the last email I sent to Ed, September 2nd. I began it as my attempt to break the news of his mom's passing the previous night as his family had been unable to reach him and so reached out to me to try my avenues.  As you'll see I never did manage to tell him.  I didn't have the heart...or the courage.  I just closed the letter with a P.S. that his family were desperate to reach him.

The reason I wrote such a long preamble to the intended reveal is that I hoped to give him the sense that he didn't have to suffer this new blow alone, that he could choose to let those of us who loved him share the burden.  I wanted him to know..... well just read it:

As we enter the month of september we approach the string of dates that hold the most emotional angst for me. your birthday, my birthday, election week, our anniversary, holiday season, inauguration day, valentine's day, the last sleepover mid march.. 

my heart did not go cold for you nor burn with anger. i still care about your well being and always will. sometimes I am still struck breathless by the realization that I have no way of knowing whether you are still alive and that if you are you don't believe I have the right to know.  because either you can not or will not communicate even to keep the last promise to bring the rest of my stuff over here.  not knowing which monkey wrenches my emotions.  but the anxiety is no longer 24/7. it is not even every day.  I apparently broke my addiction to you so I am confident that what is left is the bedrock of the true love I had from the beginning

breaking the addiction was probably aided by the fact that my Mom had another stroke July 7 and everything changed here.  There is little extra time for thots about things not related to her needs.  she no longer goes to Portland for weekends.

some of the hardest moments since June 7 have been when I encounter the kinds of things I would automatically want to share with you.  this video is the latest:

 

"My Sweet Indian Child" THE BEST EVER by Wuauquikuna

I wish with all my heart that I could send this Native American Musical Shaman back to the side of your crib in the late fifties to play this song-prayer for you to heal whatever was broken in the innocent baby boy to cause him to grow up believing that love wasn't trustworthy and thus wasn't real.

Always holding you in Light and Love

Note: The relevance of the video is that Ed was either 1/4 or 1/8 Lakota (my memory is unclear whether it was his dad or grandfather who was half-blooded) and it was a very meaningful aspect of his identity. 

Go Forth My Sweet Indian Brave
Into That Undiscovered Country
Knowing
I Was Tickled to Be Your Joy

Backstory highlights and high and low notes:

2013 Piles of Painted Echoes

2013 Our Broken Valentine

2013 Together We Are Amazing

2015 My Heart is the Lake of Fire

2020 Who Am I Without You?

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sorting My Stuff

2020 Of Truth and Words and Rude Epiphanies.

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Get Up and Move

Look Up, Get Up, But Never Give Up

I've been on the hunt for aids to regain and optimize motivation, energy and optimism as I've just been through another very rough patch with my mood disorder.

I don't know how to divide the blame between the natural cycling of moods that has always been in play vs the slippery slope of letting hard won habits slide away (like fudging on my self-care regimens--meds, sleep, exercise, hygiene) vs the several triggers I encountered between Thanksgiving and New Year's (the disappointment in not getting to spend Christmas with Ed and his family followed by passing the one year mark of my arrival at Mom's for an intended 3 week visit) vs the intense stress between Halloween and New Year's due to over commitment..

I supposed it doesn't really matter.  It happened.  Time to move on.

Moving aka exercise is the habit I chose as the first to focus on establishing when I made the commitment to both my counselor and Ed to get on the tramp for a minimum of fifteen minutes immediately after the morning vid chat with Ed.  That was the day of my last appointment three weeks ago and it is fairly well set now so I'm expecting to add another one during my counselor appointment tomorrow.

Not sure which yet.  Will discuss it with her tomorrow.  But the idea is to anchor each new habit to one that is already established.  I got that from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  That is why when she asked me to choose a task to commit to I looked for something I could anchor to the vid chat which was one of the few things I still did at nearly the same time every day.  The others being lunch, dinner and reading to Mom before her bedtime..  I chose the vid chat as the anchor as the other things are not as stable Friday through Sunday when Mom spends the weekend at my brother's.

LOOK UP - GET UP - SUIT UP - LIFT UP - MOVE UP

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Sunday Serenity #361

Two weeks ago I began a 'My Bucket List' series for Sunday Serenity.   I will keep the linked list of the preceding ones at the bottom of the post.

I forgot to clarify in the first that my bucket list has a different criteria than the common 'things I want to do before I die'  for me it is 'things I want to do before I loose the rest of my vision'

My Bucket List

#3 Swim with dolphins

Ever since I was about 11 and saw my very first color TV episode which happened to be Flipper, I've loved the idea of swimming with a dolphin.  Then in the late 90s I had a vivid dream of frolicking with them in the ocean.  The scene was so suffused with intense bright color and emotions of serenity, bliss and joy I woke myself up laughing out lout with tears streaming into my ears.

Ever since that dream has been a touchstone of happiness and a symbol of joy for me.  And therefore a symbol of my true self. That intensified my desire to a nearly obsessive level.

The images in the video are gorgeous but the story being told gives me pause about my dream as it depicts dolphins living in captivity as being homesick, sad, bored and deprived of the essence of being who they are.  Which requires the freedom to swim free in the deep, wide ocean and be in community with their family and friends.

Other than in that dream, I never pictured swimming with wild dolphins in the ocean. I doubt I have either the strength or the swimming skills to swim in the ocean.  Add in my visual impairment and it seems impossible to imagine.  And now I feel guilty picturing doing so with captive dolphins at a resort or aquarium.

But I can't cut loose the dream either.

My Bucket List

#1 Hot Air Balloon Ride
#2 Play on a real drum set

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A Day for Remembering and Gratitude

Keep Flapping Your Wings
more animals  see share caption

Today is the day each year that I am remembering with gratitude the lives of the two significant men in my life.  It is my husband's birthday into this world and my Dad's birthday into the next.  It was this day in 2005 that my Dad lost his battle with cancer.  And I'm fairly sure that was the last time I was apart from Ed on his birthday.  As I am this year.

The picture above I captioned at cheezeburger.com to send in his Happy Birthday email.  The picture below is from our high school yearbook.  Ed is the player on the left.  This was 1976 around a full year into our friendship.  Friendship morphed into something more when he came home on leave from the Marine Corp in August of 1977.  We married in December of 1978.

Below is, I believe, the last picture ever taken of my Dad.  About 5-7 days before the end.  It was a day or two after this that the events of one of my favorite stories about Dad happened.  The family--Mom, Dad, my sister--were on a conference call with me who was living in Phoenix OR.  My sister was trying to get across to me without being explicit in Dad's hearing that I better come soon if I wanted to see him again before the funeral.  I remember thinking that I wanted to wait until after Ed's birthday which was about five days away.  I can't remember if I said that out loud.

We were wrapping up the conversation.  Dad had already left the table where they were gathered around a speaker phone.  Suddenly Mom was calling his name and then her voice faded into the distance.  My sister and I continued to talk and at that point she did get explicit.  But before I could respond the sound of Mom and Dad's muffled voices were getting closer again.  Mom's sounding plaintive and Dad's growly.  Then my sister abruptly ended the call saying, Gotta go.  Dad's trying to go outside.

Richard Wayne Coon
d. September 24, 2005
The compilation of the photo with the hymn was done by Carri.
It was one of Dad's favorites and we gathered around his bed singing it to him on his last night

Carri shared the rest of the story in an email later that evening.  Dad had got it into his head that he wanted to go see Levi's pumpkin.  That's Carri's son, 11 years old at the time.  Dad had been watching that pumpkin grow all summer and it was an impressive size by then.

Well Levi's pumpkin was in the back yard and to get there you must take two steps down from the kitchen door into the garage and exit onto the an uneven slab of concrete, cross it and take one step down onto the landing of the stairway then ten steps down to the patios which was another uneven slab of concrete to cross before reaching the edge of the grass.  The pumpkin was on the far side of the back yard which meant twenty feet of turf to cross, clumpy with weeds and ankle high grass.  Yard work had not been high on their priority list for several weeks at this time.

Carri told me that when Dad had left the table he had headed into their bedroom and they thought he was going to lay down as being up and about was quite tiring for him by now.  But he came back down the hall with his walker and wearing his hat.  That's when Mom had called his name and left the table to go to him.  But unable to talk him out of it she was helping him out the back door when my sister realized she had better join them as nothing good could come of a nearly blind woman helping a weak man with a walker down stairs and across uneven terrain.

So they slowly and carefully escorted him out to the backyard and got him sat down in a lawn chair a few feet from the pumpkin where he sat had stared at it until the sun had dropped below the roofs of the neighbors' houses and an evening breeze kicked up.  Dad had almost no insulation under his skin by then so he was finally convinced it was time to go in and they all began the long slow trek.

That was Dad's last foray outside.  The memory and the story could bring smiles and even laughter over the next weeks and months as one or the other of us would recount it always emphasizing how determined Dad had been to go outside just to sit and watch the pumpkin grow.

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NaNo Nerves?

I awoke from a dream last night in which I overheard two voices arguing.  One saying in a voice dripping with scorn that the story didn't hold any water.  The other saying with belligerence that it did so and in fact it held enough for a pelican's suicide.

I woke up giggling.

The puns my mind makes in my dreams crack me up sometimes.

NaNo starts for me in less than six hours now and I haven't been back to sleep and that in spite of spending most of the night and morning feeling like I was coming down with the flu.  Maybe it was just a case of the nerves.  Tho it felt a lot like the mumps and mono rolled into one. And stomach flu too.

Even if it was just nerves it would behoove me to get some sleep before the midnight start.  A nap at least.  And then plan on laying down again as soon as I get my 1667 words.

As much as I'm loving Scrivener.  In concept anyway.  I don't think I've got enough familiarity with the features yet that the ap can fade into the background while I focus on the story.  I keep fiddling, fudging and fumbling my way around and I know that will interrupt the storydream state that I must maintain to write the story.  So for a few days at least I'm going to stick with Whiz and on days when I make my 1667 words in plenty of time I can move them over to Scrivener and keep fumbling my way around it until I am comfortable.

Time for a NaNo nap now.  And even if nerves keep me awake a few hours with the lights out and netbook lid closed (if not eyelids) while I daydream my story will be more helpful than all the frantic research, fiddling with aps and fretting.

BTW if you're a WriMo my username is joywrite.  Buddy me.

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Pie in the Sky Dished Up

I love watching those talk shows and reality TV shows in which people's wildest dreams are made real for them. Like Extreme Home Makeovers and of course Oprah who seems to have made an art form of it.

Why do I love it so? Because watching it happen for other's not only gives me the warm, fuzzy feeling of seeing their joy but it somehow makes the possibility of it happening for me more palpable. Like all I need to do is reach up and cut a slice off that pie in the sky that at other times seems so out of reach.

This week was the opening of the final season of The Oprah Show and there had been teasers for weeks about the dreams coming true for unsuspecting people. I was sooo looking forward to it.

Then on Sunday our satellite box gave up the ghost and its going to be sometime next week before a replacement reaches us. So I missed the entire week of Oprah shows. I so do not understand why The Oprah shows can't be made available in other formats online whether on Oprah.com, the websites of the local affiliates that air the shows or an iTunes download. It seems like it could only be a win-win for everybody involved. But that's off topic.

Today's Oprah was especially important to me as besides several ultimate dreams coming true Oprah was to announce the new Oprah Book Club selection. But even that wasn't the best or most important thing about that show. The best thing was that I have a connection--however small and peripheral it may be--to one of the parties involved in making one of those dreams a reality.

My husband works for the company that partnered with Oprah to take one of the products of a small New England bakeshop to a national and probably even international customer base.

The product is a chicken pie from The Centerville Pie Company of Cape Cod Massachusetts.

The chicken pie is going to be featured in the catalog, the website, the hundreds of stores nationwide and will be the Pie of the Month for Harry & David (Happiness Delivered).

My husband works in shipping so he'll have a direct hand in the delivery of said pies.

Maybe it's silly but there is something thrilling about being that closely connected to the fulfilling of someones dream. The only thing more thrilling would be to have dished up that slice of someone's pie-in-the-sky to them my own self.

Especially to someone as deserving as the two women who started The Centerville Pie Company and then teamed up with a local organization, Cape Abilities, that helps people with disabilities get jobs that match their capabilities.. See their story on Oprah.com.

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Some Dream of Disney

I dream of visiting Shakespeare & Co bookstore in Paris.

No, I take that back, I dream of living in this bookstore or one very very like it.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading Under the Dome, due at the library tomorrow tho I'll be keeping it until at least Monday morning (fine-free) after which I may have to 'rent' it at $0.20 per day (our library system's fine) retroactive to Friday.

Meaning, I must consider that I may be in 'rent' mode as of midnight tomorrow. Still over 400 pages to go. Didn't progress far yesterday as I chose to take advantage of my in-laws being away overnight to watch DVD on their big front room TV most of last night and until noon today. At which point I'd been awake over 24 hours again. And so soon after Saturday's Read-a-Thon!

I had around four hours of restless sleep frequently disturbed by the sound of hard rain or hail on the trailer's roof. (Imagine being trapped inside a child's lunch box on the playground in a rainstorm). So I don't know how long I can expect to read tonight.

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Yeah. I'll Get Right on That

moar funny pictures
I took that muscle relaxant right after posting last night. I was asleep before midnight. Not sure by how much. I slept until about half an hour ago--quarter to five, give or take--nearly 17 hours!!! Not that I never woke up. I did several times but I just couldn't be bothered to move. So I'd fall back to sleep. Into dreams that were vivid but not exactly pleasant. Not quite nightmares. A lot of sorting and other kinds of monotonous chores. A lot of arguing with characters from real life and story that morphed in and out. A lot of listening to alarming news reports from a radio or TV that wasn't in the scene so maybe those voices were coming out of the ether. And that sense of moving being an effort. Such an effort! Like swimming in pudding.

I'm sitting up now. Waiting for the call to dinner. The complaints from that muscle in my back are at whisper level as long as I make no sudden moves. I thought I'd get something posted now so I can use my session tonight for something else. Maybe write. Maybe read (currently in middle of The Elegance of the Hedgehog). Maybe crochet. Maybe a little of each. But at this moment it is hard to imagine wanting to do anything but go back to sleep. Only the memory of that dreariness I just woke from keeps me from wanting that.

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One of Those Days

moar funny pictures

I've been having one of those days when everything I touch I fumble, drop, damage, loose, or otherwise make worse off.

My in-laws turned the heat off an hour ago and it's chilling down fast. A snuggle with my fleece blanket is appealing right now. With the light out. And eyes closed.

A nap. Yes, a nap might knock this headache. Plus the best place for a bad mood is sleep--either I just loose awareness of it or it serves to make very interesting dreams. In dreamland the more damage the better. Just like in storyland.

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Sunday Serenity #156

moar funny pictures


moar funny pictures
Been goofing with my drum sticks. Tapping on everything in sight. Learning to hold them right and trying to learn to hold a beat for longer than ten seconds. It's not as easy done as said. The manual that came with my kit suggests a metronome so Ed found a freeware one online and downloaded it for me. Check it out here.

Have also been goofing on icanhascheezeburger.com. Captioned a bunch in the last few days. Check em out here.

Did some goofing around with Ed today too. We went out to eat at Carl Jr and then shopping for snack foods to munch while watching three more episodes of Gilmore Girls season six. I crocheted three more bookmarks during and just after that. Tonight he had to crash early as he as to be at work by 5AM but because of that he's expecting to get home early enough to take me to the library where more drumming books, DVD and CDs are waiting and to the post office to mail the five bookmarks to my read-a-thon mini-challenge winners (after taking me to store for the proper envelopes.)

I've been goofing away most of an entire week and goofing time is about over. Tomorrow work on my fiction WIP goes back on the daily agenda and along with it fiction reading, which I've been neglecting to the detriment of my writing. As a writer of fiction I must stop thinking of reading fiction as something I 'get' to do only after my 'work' is done and treat it as one of the duties in my 'job' description.

[ooops. i goofed when typing the title and didn't catch it before publishing. this is only my 156th Sunday Serenity]

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I Dreamed a Dream

I have been obsessed with the Susan Boyle phenomenon since Tuesday night. I had seen a snippet of the Britain's Got Talent performance on Oprah last week and had barely taken note. But Tuesday evening after I posted my whine about being grumpy and needing to catch up on sleep, I thought to wind down by going to YouTube to check out the video mentioned on Oprah and NBC Nightly News as having taken millions of hits in just a week.

I should have realized this wasn't a 'wind down' activity. But it was in my mind as a 'for fun' and 'for a kicking back moment' the kind of thing that I've been putting on my 'for later' list for months. That list that is likely to be longer than the road between where I'm at and where I wish I was by the time I get there. (It's over 300 miles between Longview WA and Phoenix OR)

So instead of going to sleep early Tuesday night, I spent the next couple hours watching and re-watching the full version of Susan Boyles BGT appearance. I really wanted to embed that one in this post but the embed was disabled. As it was for every one of the vids featuring more than a few notes of the song whether put up by the BGT people, news organizations or fans. I don't get what they think they are protecting by disabling the embed but leaving the video on YouTube. It seems to me that allowing the embed can only be good for the promotion of their program. But that issue is another topic altogether...

By the time I found this video Tuesday evening it had been viewed over 38 million times. By this evening it had topped 42 million. (I wonder if they count mutiple views of single viewers or only unique views because if everybody watched it ten times like I did Tuesday and another six time like I did tonight....)

The first time I watched it, I started crying before she got to the end of the first line: I dreamed a dream in time gone by.

And I don't mean I was gently weeping.

I blubbered all the way through the first four viewings.

I've been trying to figure out just what this phenomenon is ever since. Both what gripped me so hard and why there has been such a global sensation.

Ah but my heart wants a divorce from my mind. It wants a moratorium on 'figuring it out'. My heart just wants to be immersed in it. To live it. And if it is vicarious so be it.

But for those hours Tuesday night and again tonight, I knew what it was to have had a dream I dreamed in my youth and given up all hope for return to lift me out of despair into a reality a thousand times more brilliant than the dream itself. Being one who has had such a dream and lost hope and got a grip again... That much I already knew intimately. But the moment in this video where this woman, just three years younger than me, hit that high note midway and the crowd came to their feet...that moment made real to me what it would be to realize my own dream. It made it seem not only possible but as if it has already happened and all I need to do is remember....

Yes, I suppose this all sounds ridiculous and as cloying as a bad cliche.

Oh well. It is what it is.

My admiration and gratitude for Susan Boyle abounds. She has showed me what courage really is. And the value of persistence. And most of all the importance of devotion to ones own dream...no matter the length of the road between where you are and where you wish you were.

If you haven't seen it yet, clickhere to go watch the full version of the video. It is so worth it.


Lyrics to I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables:

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high,
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used,
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.

And still I dream he'll come to me
And we will live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather...

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

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Sunday Serenity #87

print for sale at art.com

Today I've promised use of the laptop to Ed so I'm going to get lost in daydreaming. Mostly about my FOS story world to prepare to return to work on Crystal's story. But I've also got a poem to write for Monday Poetry Train. Hmmm. Maybe I could combine the two projects?

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Even My Dreams Are Chewing Me Out

I woke into the heat of the afternoon from a dream in which a member of my extended family was announcing that he had decided he had no choice but to quit his job, uproot his entire family and move because his boss was requiring that he buy his own tools but the company making the tools would sell them only to someone with a diploma in wrench bending technique and his boss wouldn't give him time off to take the class.

See yesterday's post if you don't get the joke my dream was playing on me. I'm too busy to retell it as my boss, Sven, is insisting that I hand over a toolbox full of bent wrenches by Sunday or he's gonna throw a bucket of sweat on me.

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Water Babies Swim in My Dreams

I haven't just been surfing the web this week. I have been deep-diving for pearls. Pears otherwise known as free electronic format books to either read online or download. It began as part of my project to find substitutes for at least some of the resources I lost when our libraries closed earlier this month. Then the search itself became fascinating in its own right. I will be sharing some of my finds either in posts or in my sidebar.

I'm going to begin with a book that I stumbled upon which sent me into a nostalgia daze. That is The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. I have vivid memories of this book from childhood. It wasn't mine but a cousin's and I remember not only being in awe of the story and its illustrations but in awe of the privilege of borrowing such a treasure from an older cousin whom I adored.



I remembered the story of a little boy covered in soot because he worked cleaning out rich peoples chimneys all day for a boss who was a bully. Then one day he fell in a river and became a water baby--naked, having "nothing on but himself" and about the size of an adult's hand He proceeded to have adventures with talking animals and fairy godmothers and a very special little friend.

I stumbled on these ebook editions first at Project Gutenberg. There is a choice between HTML and plain text downloads. I was thrilled and a tad sad at the same time. It just wasn't the same without those dreamy illustrations I remembered. I immediately thought of the Google full view books I had discovered several weeks ago in my search for online reading when I was preparing that TT about substitutions for library resources. I knew that Google Books was in the process of providing both online reading and PDF downloads of a great deal of public domain literature. So I headed over there and soon found this version, which said it was illustrated. I was quite pleased with this one once it was open, but not completely charmed as the illustrations were not one bit familiar to me and I was just yearning to gaze on those ones once more.



So I did a Google search for The Water Babies and somewhere on the first page or two of it, there was this link to some pages on the Library of Congress site, purporting to celebrate an exhibition of the twelve "lavish drawings Jessie Willcox Smith produced as color plates for The Water-Babies in 1916." That sounded very promising so I headed on over there and as soon as I was on the first page, I knew I was in the right place. The pages had been created to promote a 1999 exhibition of the original drawings at the Swan Gallery. Moments later I had found this page, displaying all twelve of the drawings in JPG format. I checked carefully for any warning that they were copyrighted in anyway or forbidden for download and found this page clarifying the law and etiquette of use of the pictures found on the LOC site. So I think I am safe to post a couple here.

This is the one I remember the clearest:

I just couldn't get over how tickled I was to be gazing upon them once again. Ah, the power of nostalgia. But it is more. It is the power of nostalgia coupled with the power of story and imagination. It is the memory of the way a book like this could take me out of this world. I am a bit afraid that the cloying, Victorian morality ambience of this story is going to rub the adult me a bit wrong but I have determined not to let that stop me from enjoying emersing myself in the water baby world again.





As I look at these pictures I am left wondering just how much influence this book and these illustrations had on the strong baby motif infiltrating my dreams from those early days. I cannot remember a time when I was not remembering vivid dreams nearly every night of my life. One of the strongest themes running in my dreams was that of infants and baby dolls. They can range in size from as small as my thumb to as big as a large watermelon. But the two most common sizes are that of a typical newborn and that of my hand. Oddly enough these are the sizes of my two most favorite dolls in childhood. I had the newborn sized doll from about age three so it is hard to know whether the doll or the dreams came first. But I know that I had been having the dreams for years before I ever got my Cheerful Tearful doll in the late sixties.

Babies about that size, swimming in water, speaking with import if not wisdom, needing rescue, offering comfort, have proliferated in my dreams for decades. I don't know which came first--the dreams of babies or my fascination with them. But my mom tells me that I exhibited an extremely strong fascination with my newborn baby brother at 22 months, pulling him off the couch onto his head in an attempt to kiss him and another time nearly tipping the buggy over by pulling down on the handle until I could get a good view of him inside. I know I was still in a crib when I began having dreams of babies and living baby dolls but I suspect I was already sharing my nursery with my baby brother.





For a bonus: In my explorations of Jessica Wilcox Smith's work, I ran across these pages offering prints and posters for sale. Here. Here. And here. From them I discovered that I had seen Ms. Smith's illustrations in many more of my favorite childhood books. Many of you may recognize some of them yourselves.

This could have been me except that this 1920 Good Housekeeping cover was published about forty years before I was old enough to hold a book that size by myself.
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