I called my friend Carol Zim from our Princeton days to wish her a late Happy Thanksgiving and an early Happy Birthday. It feels good to keep in contact with old friends. After we moved away from Princeton, at some point, and I can't remember precisely when Mike started to spend Thanksgiving day with them. Dorothy's daughter, Karin, was in a relationship with David, her future husband. It worked out better if they spent Thanksgiving Day with his family. Our contingent switched to doing Thanksgiving on Wednesday, leaving Mike and me free to drive south to Maryland. God bless these folks, almost every time we were there, one of us was sick, and they welcomed us anyway and made us comfortable.
We met the Zims when they bought the house next door to us in Princeton. We were renting a house on a small side street just off one of the main drags. We had been friends with the previous owner and were introduced before they officially moved in.
We went to welcome them on the day they did move in. John announced that their refrigerator was broken. I said, "We're leaving for the weekend. Here's a key to the house; use our refrigerator." I know this story because John has told it repeatedly to say how weird I was. Now, in all fairness, they had just moved from New Haven, Connecticut. They lived in a poor section of town with a high crime rate while Carol worked on her Ph.D. at Yale. Break-ins were common. That had not been my life experience. Besides, I considered myself a reasonably good judge of character. In my judgment, these folks were not going to clear out my house. Besides, what kind of nut takes advantage of someone they live next door to. A drug addict, maybe. They didn't look the type.
At yoga today, I got my back flat on the ground. Rearranging my back puts stress on my leg. Then when I walk, it improves and then gets a little worse and then better and then a little worse. The usual, but I think it is going in the right direction. When things get bad, I turn on the trigger point massager on my leg and back, and voila, things get better immediately.
While meditating, I recalled Mike's love for me and how it felt. Wonderful! We were lucky people that we were both comfortable being loving people, showing affection. I think I would have felt despair if I had to live without it. The greatest sadness of my life was my mother's rejection of my affection when I was a child. It was more of a wound than all the vitriol she threw at me. I don't do well with coolness. Mike's love stays with me; it sustains me now that he is gone. I can remember that I was someone who was loved. I can only hope that I did as much for him as he did for me.
I feel I have to remind folks that, no, our relationship was not perfect. There were ways we both disappointed and annoyed each other with our behaviors. But, at least for me, the affection overwhelmed any objections I had.
I must say neither one of us felt controlled by the other. I feel comfortable making that statement for both of us because I asked Mike outright. "Do you feel I'm controlling?" I asked because I felt so satisfied with what I got in the relationship, and through our relationship, I wondered if I was managing to always get things my way. He would assure me, no. Now, I did feel that Mike needed things his way more than I did. I often let him have his way in response to that, but not when it was a serious conflict with mine. If there was a strong conflict of interest, I stood my ground, and things usually went my way then. But then again, if something was very important to him, it went his way. We weighed out our relative needs. Concession was always a possibility.
I trimmed some more of the heliconia in the yard off the bedroom, sent out some updates, meditated, and made two phone calls.
One of the calls was with my friend, Zola; the other was with my nephew's girlfriend, a research neuroscientist working on a post-doc at Princeton University. She is doing research on the role of the cerebellum in autism. I learned some fascinating details about the role of the cerebellum in learning. It is the part of the brain that manages quality control. It holds an image of what should be. When things do not match up, it sets off an alarm. Also, while parts of the brain do the heavy lifting for a particular task, all parts are involved. If any part is missing, the response is different. Later, it occurred that some people who have had hemispherectomies have half of the brain removed can still function. In fact, there are people born with only half a brain who still function.
I did some work in the library tonight. I looked through books I had set aside because they were edited compilations. I found four additional books, enough for a small box. I also alphabetized the books in one bay and started on a second. When I finished the second one, I started searching for books on a new bay. I only have two full ones left to do and then several miscellaneous shelves.
Darby joined me for the evening's walk.
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