Saturday, January 18, 2025

 Saturday, January 18, 2025

       This was an easy day of working on updates and gardening. I trimmed five shrubs along the top section of the driveway.  I need to keep them low enough to reach them. I can use a ladder on some because the driveway is flat, but the ones below are on a significant slant. A step ladder there would be risky at best. Dean and Nina don't think well of me messing with ladders at my age.  I agree. If I fall, I'm a dead woman.  I do hold on to something while I'm up there. I calculate which way I can fall to do the minimum damage. The biggest threat to my physical safety is the damn sprinkler heads. That's what got me a year and a half ago when I fell and shattered my left elbow joint and shoulder. 

   I felt so good about taking on those shrubs and finding it relatively easy that I was inspired to clean up the dining room table/ desk.   Items were sitting there I wasn't using. They could be put away instead of being decorative clutter.

    I am a pronounced extrovert. Introverts are the bane of my existence, not because they're introverts but because they hate me. Extroverts are visible and impactful. Introverts keep to themselves and avoid contact. Introverts believe they do no harm.  They are quietly hostile, think no one notices, and have no impact. Everyone has an impact.  No one gets out of this without having an effect.

   Both introversion and extroversion have positive and negative aspects. To the extent that either is driven by fear, it is negative. To the extent either is driven by positive emotions, it is positive.  I can't imagine a person completely free from fear. I'm not suggesting it's possible.  But I do know, as an extrovert who chose that path, that it can be as much a defense against sustained contact with other human beings as a total retreat from all contact.  I recognized that when in my twenties.  I saw the two modalities represented as being on either side of the proscenium. The introverts sit in the audience, and the extroverts are on the stage. e audience. They have some contact with the other actors, but they're a sage distance from learning to deal with person-to-person contact is a developed skill. I've worked hard to accomplish it. I still feel a mile from my goal.  I can't be something appropriate for all people at all times.  I don't try. I try to be myself with as much consideration of others as possible. That pathway is narrow; it's a slim passage between regard for my needs and those of others.

      It was a goal I set when I was a child. I believed there was some way I could be there for myself and my mother at the same time. There had to be a way.  There was- at least to my satisfaction. I feel the day-to-day relationship I had with my mother when she lived with me at the end of her life was good enough. Of course, I can only attest from my perspective. I chose to believe from some of the positive things she said to me and others who repeated what she had to say about me, that it was also good enough for her.

    Sadly, this does not mean that our relationship was entirely resolved.  There were lingering issues from my childhood that we never saw eye-to-eye on.  My mother had an 'interesting' point of view. She believed I was putting her down if I held a different opinion, perspective, or even knowledge than she did.   When I discovered that, I gave up on believing complete reconciliation was ever possible.

    I discovered this fatal flaw a few years before she died.  We were watching TV together. An ad came on.  I thought the model wasn't beautiful.  My mother said, "Isn't she beautiful?"  I thought, what an excellent opportunity to share our respective points of view and get to know each other better.  I said, "I don't think so."  She said, "Why do you always have to put me down?"  I was stumped.  That stopped me in my tracks.  If I had to see everything the way she saw it to be 'respectful', I had to surrender my thoughts to hers. Holy cow! Where do you go from there?