Pink clouds over Albuquerque, NM
There are mornings here that are so breathtakingly beautiful, you wonder why there aren't more people living here. ~ Then I remember that New Mexico is a pitifully poor state, where the majority of the employees work for the government (state or city employment), or Intel (that has the reputation of cyclically laying people off & then hiring again), Sandia National Labs, the community college or university, etc. Since losing my own job, I see that the pay scale for those without degrees is pitiful. I even agreed to work for the animal hospital for less than half of what I was earning previously. Not that having an anthropology degree is going to pave the way for some elaborate paycheck :-)
As I was laying in bed this morning....I've been up since 5:20am reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri,a wonderful novel of a family that imigrates to the US from India (Pulitzer prize winner too). First from the viewpoint of Ashiri, then from Gogol her son. When Gogol's father dies, I put the book down on my bedspread, and lie on my side, thinking of my own father...how glad I was to have seen him before he died, when we hadn't seen each other in years....how sad I was to realize that his wife (never my step-mom, =shudder=) hated us, never mentioned us in the obituatry of the paper, and never offered us to take a small keepsake before we left that Saturday. If I had been asked, I would have asked for the cast iron bank my Dad had since I was a small child, in the shape of a covered wagon. It's not worth anything. But I remember opening it for a few coins to use in the school cafeteria, only to discover later on that these were old coins that Dad was saving. Funny now, but he did not find it at all amusing at the time. It is gone now, God knows where, possibly sold for pennies in some horrid garage sale she probably had before she moved back to Mexico, where she had extensive family. The item I would have cherished gathering dust on someone's shelf. Ah, well.
Time just continues on, oblivious of our happiness, tragedies, mundane chores (today is laundry day for me). Nothing can stop it, or make it go backwards, so that one can redo that one decision that has led to the loneliness ~ and at the same time exhilaration ~ of being a simple housewife. It is funny, but I find myself feeling guilty of the simple pleasure of having nowhere to be at a certain time of the day, allowing me the luxury of enjoying the pink clouds that remind me of cotton candy. It is beautiful.
Love, 365
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