From when things were a little worse

So I have been doing better then worse then better then worse but overall tending toward better with a reassuring, if slow, steadiness.  I have been writing a lot to move through these last months of free time and instability. I wrote this next bit on 2/26 so a little while ago. I'm not struggling so hard to get off the couch anymore, that is a pretty great improvement.  I knew this was eventually gonna go 'tell me about your parents' so here is a beginning to that:

Mom always tried to plan things out, always thinking about how to fit everything in.  How many meals advance can we plan for and store, to take fewer trips for groceries.  What should we get from which store?  Her mom had a perfect memory for the grocery mailers, it was like store signs would arrange her list in her head for which products are cheapest at which store.  Mom tried to do the same thing with time, and trying to model that strategy has served me extremely well as an engineer.  I remember as an intern the CEO gave us a talk and he said the best thing we could do to be a better engineer was to work faster.  I was annoyed at the ‘pep talk from the boss’ aspect, I guess because I have weird authority issues, but he did actually have a deeper point than to get more work out of us.  Calculating time efficiency and organizing tasks by minimum total time let me do more projects at once or make progress faster than my peers, it is probably what earned me 2 promotions in 2 years, the 2nd one I was the only one promoted because officially they were on hold and they had to get a special exception because my work had been exceptional.  I’m in the top 20% earners at my company.  They call it highly compensated individuals, I am one of those. And mom, I don’t know how she used that time efficiency at work but she is better at it than me and she certainly used it with every moment of spare time.  She knew which recipes had soaking or chilling steps and how long she had to get something else done in that time.  Knew how driving ETA depended on time of day so tried to stack different destinations based on least time spent driving instead of by shortest total distance. 

But she always made time to get some produce from the farmers.   I don’t know how she found this place, but there was a farmstand that set up in the back of this strip mall after work on weekdays, sort of by the exit door of a mall theater.  Like a farmers market before they were things.  They always had a great mix of really good looking produce.  I don’t know if they were one farmer or a group of farmers, but they were always nice young men who smiled at us as they weighed out baskets of shining tomatoes and zucchini and corn.  Mom never spoke with them beyond friendly smiles across some invisible politeness barrier, but we would go there the same time every week and they had that pleasant familiarity without the stress of awkward conversation.  Like they communicated more with their faces then words.  Sounds delightful as I write it, and I remember it delightful.  Such flavorful asparagus, sometimes artichokes, different types of peaches and nectarines and baskets of perfect berries.  Huh. I just realized that my whole life I have assumed that I got a bad piece when I get peaches and nectarines from the store, they taste so different from what I expect.  Mom was real serious about healthy living hippy-style (we baked our own granola and dehydrated our own tofu jerky) and she definitely already knew about pesticides and stuff so most of our veggies came from there, for years.  And she liked to go to the stand after picking me up, even though the traffic would be better if she went to the stand first.  She liked me to go with her after school.  I asked why and she said that she wanted me to get to enjoy it too, she always likes to see all the really nice produce.  Mexican men are always nice to my mom, they have a sort of gentleness toward her that you can feel.  It was years later that I learned that her mom, so grandma and her family, they were farmworkers when they moved north. 

They had their own farm in mexico or maybe it was a ranch, but they fled political instability in the … well I don’t remember, I think she got here the year before the great depression but don’t know if that is a real memory or not, oh or maybe it was the year after.  She definitely told me that she loved picking the fruit trees, and that she was really good at it and she liked the feeling of being the best at somethings.  She was faster than her dad and brothers even though they were men!  Well, she was the oldest of them and her father was a drunkard and an abuser, but those parts didn’t come up when she told me about picking peaches and nectarines.  Sometimes they would get to take home a whole crate of the extras and rejects, and sometimes they could go back after dark and collect rejects from around the trees.  On those days grandma would make a big fruit cobbler and that would be their dinner.  She makes the best fruit cobbler on the planet. She doesn’t say a lot about her mom, only that she worked very hard.  But grandma wasn’t the oldest.  She was the 3rd of 5, I think the oldest sister and…the guy we never talk about, I think they were both a good bit older.  I’ll have to check with my aunt, maybe she can help me with that history.

It is dog’s birthday.  And a Saturday.  I should take her to dog park. I could get her some bacon and I’ll get some sweet tea thing to drink.  Then we’ll go to dog park and romp around.  Then…then I’ll just be further from home in this body that hurts.  It feels like I have been not moving for too long, am starting to feel ill in this skin, like things hurt.  Should it be another fungible day of stuck on the couch? Why not?  I was going to use today as the leaving the house test to see if I have less fear later in the day, but I don’t wanna have less fear.  I wanna dive into this beast.  Bring it on.  I’m going to get dressed and then do a courage to heal workbook prompt.  At the DINING ROOM TABLE.  Because I am that brave. Then will see what happens next.