Holy Week

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On April 11th, we awoke to snow. Schools closed, power in and out, internet in and out, trees down and falling down. Trees that were heavy-laden with blossoms: double cherries, lilac, manzanita, a crab apple pulled up by the roots. On April 12th, I drove home from work through rain, thunder, hail and then snow. At choir rehearsal, we could barely hear each other over the hail on the roof. Cherry blossoms everywhere.

The kitchen floor has been buckling--great rises and bubbles in the linoleum and when I pulled the threshold up, it was wet and smelled of mold. Do not ask how much a new kitchen costs. We will have to pay it. We thought it was from the old dishwasher leak, but today a drip of water from the basement ceiling on R.'s neck, and more water seeping from beneath the threshold: perhaps it is the new dishwasher that is leaking. 

When I drove J. to therapy, we saw a bald eagle on a cell tower, an osprey on its nest on a billboard. The sky was bruised. It hailed when we drove home. 

When I have checked on the chickens for the past month, a strong smell of gas. Rotten eggs. Thursday, rain, hail. Friday, the furnace went out, complete,  . The HVAC tech came, attempted to repair it but it was unrepairable, 18 years old, likely leaking CO or about to leak CO. Today a new furnace was installed, Holy Saturday and two blessed HVAC techs spent five hours in the basement, hauled the new furnace up our 30 steps and then down the basement steps, hauled the old one away. Do not ask how much a new furnace costs. We will have to pay it.

Today, three eggs in the nest box, and after a months of no eggs, a bounty in the kitchen. 

The house is 110 years old. The kitchen floor has churned a panic in me, a kind of shame, a terror of spending so much money, so much money.  Of having a falling-down house. I have lived in falling-down houses, houses where pulling up the carpet revealed urine stained wood floors, where burned trash had cemented itself to the basement floor; houses where any changes I made were met with immediate and vocal disagreement from neighbors who had lived in the neighborhood for 50 years, angry notes stuck my screen door about the weeds I was letting grow, the state of my lawn, the moss on the roof. And our house is messy and I feel shame about that too, can hear my college roommate saying to me, S., it isn't THAT hard to keep organized as she stood in her spotless house.  It is not unrelated to the feelings of shame and overwhelmingness that I feel around my body, have been feeling around my body. If only I could be more controlled. If only I was not so undisciplined. Which feels the same as if only I weren't so bad.

In the garden, I've staked the rose; camas and trillium bloom. The bushtits have made their long nest again in the deodar. 

Today I woke at dawn, pulled on my running clothes, drove to Lacamas Lake and ran a 10k--slower than I have in pre-pandemic times, when I wasn't afraid of falling, before I fell in 2020 and busted my elbow, the scar lilac now instead of an angry red. Slower than beforetimes, but faster than I expected. Near mile 4, a bald eagle rose from the lake and flew over the trail. This afternoon, after the HVAC techs left and hot air began again pumping through the ducts and I could feel my fingers and the tip of my nose wasn't ice-cold, I napped hard for two hours.

As I drove over the Columbia River, I could not help thinking of that 26 year old woman in that first falling down house, what she would think to find herself here all these years later: mountains and rivers and moss and the smell of trees. 

For now it has stopped raining and the house is warm and there is dough rising in the kitchen and I've wiped the damp from where it is seeping beneath the threshold onto the dining room floor. I have hung my race medal on the hook with all of the other medals, I have eaten a piece of cake. 

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