Under a Red Roof

Volley

March 18, 2013 in Loving, Remembering by Colleen | Permalink

I love how the little blooms out front have begun their languorous opening volley to spring, the accompanying sense of hope and wonder in the tiniest of offerings. Hummingbirds have laid claim to the nectar, daring in their proximity, mere inches from my weeding and trimming.

The hubster and I were lying in bed Saturday night, bone tired but full of words, and I asked him to tell me stories of way back when. Apart for the first two years, driving on weekends between Arvada and Fort Collins and writing letters during the week because a stamp cost a lot less than a long distance phone call. We were kids, but our love felt so grown up, playing no games with our hearts.

We did all the things we do now and then some, camping and skiing and snow shoeing, long walks and hikes, discovering new-to-us restaurants. Then there were the hours tucked away in dark theaters and coffee shops, eager for each other and the words that filled the space. And the silence, too, holding hands and gazing at the pink of the horizon, a sliver of moon, or a canopy of stars, dreaming of what we’d become, but mostly grateful for all that we were at that very moment. Together and happy, the luckiest people on earth.

Tags: Gardening + Nature

Strange Day

March 15, 2013 in Learning, Remembering by Colleen | Permalink

I awoke with a start Monday morning, 3:45 on the button. The vise grip of some dark apparition around my left arm. As someone with a very high tolerance for pain, I was more than peeved. I wriggled and stretched and rubbed and won that first round, drifting back to sleep after about an hour. When I rose, it had returned and gotten worse, even spreading to my shoulder and back. I felt nauseous and it became increasingly difficult to fill my lungs. Then I remembered the cheesy “Just a Little Heart Attack” video with Elizabeth Banks, and wondered if I could be having one.

I dialed the advice line quick-like, and the nurse, when I described everything, told me to get to the hospital, and pronto. “Do not take a shower!” So the hubster zip-zipped our golden chariot to the emergency room in record time. Upon my arrival, I got a wheelchair and EKG stickers in places I’d never have thought to check. Sure enough, my little heart was at a full gallop, and that damn vise was no looser on my left arm, either.

The nurse asked if there was any possibility it could be a panic attack, and to quote a recent callous observer of my life, “Colleen, you have no real problems.” I concurred, despite the fact that having no real problems does not equate with a lack of feelings, save in the observer, the biatch. Until my arm got ensnared by some unseen evil, I’d been pretty snazzy.

So, more tests. I got my blood expertly drawn, twice (no bruising!), a chest x-ray that made me feel like I’d stepped into the world of the Incredible Hulk, and, saving the best for last, an ultrasound of my left arm, because, dag-nabbit, it might smart like a heart attack but be a right and proper blood clot, for those run in the family.

And this is where I must make note of the idiosyncrasies of medical professionals. On Monday, the nurses who drew my blood complimented my good veins. “So plump I could stab it without looking.” The ultrasound tech, who joked that he learned to use the machine over lunch, said, “Wow, you image very well. Look at that valve!” Then I remembered back to my hysterectomy and my anesthesiologist uttering, “You have a beautiful spine. I would love to give it an epidural.” And, finally, the nurse who emptied my catheter bag, holding the pitcher of urine like a trophy, exclaimed, “You have beautiful pee!” It’s a different world.

And back to mine. Despite the excitement and wonder my body provided and the battery of tests and nearly six hours spent waiting and wondering, no single resolution was made. I, Colleen Sohn, remain a person without any real problems. For the sake of speculation and for someone somewhere to get a good chuckle, the likeliest source of my horrible pain? A trio of muscles, the left bicep, deltoid, and pec pulled while sleeping or applying body oil. Oh bother, and a whole week thrown off kilter.

Happy Friday!

p.s. The photo is a detail of Richmond Burton’s “Echoing Green” at the Portland Art Museum. Pretty!

Loaves and Fishes

June 15, 2012 in Celebrating, Remembering by Colleen | Permalink

When I was in Denver, after every single visit with a friend or family member, in that very private place that was my rental car, I would cry. Sometimes they were tiny tears, stopped with a widening of the eyes and a deep sigh. Others were trickier, that salty-sweet spill on my lap and hands as I drove and sang to Radiohead or Iron & Wine. Worst, or best, actually, in hindsight, were the variety that came in a torrent, and I pulled the car to the side of the road while they did their work. I just saw someone special to me! They were right there and we hugged and laughed and talked until my throat was sore! So very many cough drops, my friends.

Then there were the times when the tears could not wait, like with Kelli when she was driving, or during lunch with Hef, and with my parents and grandparents, and when I caught my first glimpse of Wendy in the distance, the very first time since high school (that’s twenty-three years, math lovers).

Then I got home, standing at the curb at the airport, and the hubster pulled up with this light in his eyes, so happy to see me, and we hugged for the longest time before taking the long way home, so I could see the city I love a bit more slowly.

And the other day, to celebrate another year of Colleen Sohn on this marvelous planet circling the sun, I had friends over. We ate and drank and talked and talked. And they humbled me with straight from the heart kindness and thoughtful gifts, but mostly their warm presence in my life.

So the title. All of this makes me think of that story, and how there was enough and more from impossibly little. My life is like that. Every time I think there couldn’t be more kindness or love, someone shows me. Every time I think life couldn’t be more beautiful, flowers bloom. A friend calls. A bird sings. A cat purrs. The hubster smiles. Music plays. I round the bend and there is the Saint John’s Bridge.

Shining examples of how good it all is.

Truth

June 1, 2012 in Being, Remembering by Colleen | Permalink

When I was in Denver, I stayed with my grandparents (who live in Lakewood, actually), and during the off-times when I wasn’t singing while driving from one happy reunion to another (so great to see everyone!), I sorted through photographs: boxes, envelopes, and willy-nilly stashes. Events and places and people I love lay in neat stacks and crazy piles, capturing various times of our lives, some surprising, some sad, and nearly all sweet.

Of course, my eye lingered longer on those of me and my growing-up days, enjoying anew the moments that have completely vanished from my memory, like running naked in my grandparents’ yard, holding a favorite doll, or crying at my brother’s first birthday party (who knows why?); conjuring other memories that are now just a glimmer, long days spent swimming at Lake Arbor Pool or playing on the jungle gym, tow-headed with summer skin. Then I came to the picture above and was struck, as if by lightening, my circuitry rerouted in one earth-shattering instant.

For nearly all of my youth, someone very close to me called me ugly and every version of FAT imaginable, nearly every single day. After hearing no evidence to the contrary, having crooked teeth (since fixed with braces as an adult), and weighing more than my torturer, I came to believe it. It was reinforced by others, too, strangers, friends, and relatives, who would say I might be prettier if my teeth were straight or if I were skinnier, like those other girls everyone chased after.

I was not the chase-after type. I generally did the chasing and talking and rabble-rousing. I saw no point in standing aside, pretending, or holding back. I was front and center in my likes and find this even more true as I grow older. No surprise there, I should think. Life is short but way too long to put up with other people’s shenanigans and hateful opinions. Seriously.

So when I saw the photo, smiling in my Shaun Cassidy t-shirt, long and lean limbs in denim shorts, my tectonic plates shifted, and so did the truth of my past. It was like meeting someone for the very first time, someone I thought I knew but really didn’t. For that younger me was neither fat nor ugly, but cute and kinda rocked her pseudo-Dorothy Hamill haircut. I cried at the knowledge it brought me and then called the hubster, excited at the discovery and grateful, too, that he’d always seen me that way.

Then I thought of the quotation from Soren Kierkegaard I posted a couple of weeks ago, “…only the truth that builds up is truth for you.” I needed to build that truth up for myself, brick by brick, before it was truly mine, indivisible from the architecture of my soul.