Tenacious
Mom used the word tenacious. I didn’t think Lena even knew what that work meant, let alone to hear her use it. There were times after Dad died that I would take vacation days from my job and stay with Mom. I would help her out with yard work, gardening, things within her home, but most of all . . . to spend time with her.
On one of those visits, I went with Mom to her Riverdale Quilting Club. The gals were finishing a quilt for someone who had agreed to pay them for doing it. The monies that they raised would be donated to a charity of their choice in time to come. Mom was in the kitchen with Ruth getting the afternoon coffee put together. I overheard Mom tell Ruth that during my stay I had raked off her flower gardens. Mom told Ruth I was tenacious.
Today I did feel tenacious. With a good night’s rest under my belt, the sunny day made things just click. The bed sheets were still warm form the night’s occupants. The beds were stripped and the hum of the washing machine could be heard. The Swiffer got a new cleaning sheet in it and the floors didn’t disappoint. There were dust bunnies to be captured.
With all the water in our yard, Dennis and I couldn’t put the deer feed out the last several nights. This morning with the ice pick in hand to steady myself, I pushed the dish as if it were a hockey puck onto the path that I have used to visit neighbor Jan. Yup, the path was iced over. With Jan’s permission the deer food dish will now be on the edge of their driveway. A bit later, Dennis and I loaded the two 50lb bags of cracked corn and alfalfa into the back of the pickup and drove it over to Jan and Randy. We visited a bit, but I didn’t get out of the pickup as their yard is glare ice. They have been putting out feed as well and it’s not the time to stop feeding them now. They need fuel just like we do to see this winter come to an end.
Dennis and I finished up working on the innards of the Santa. The amount of WD-40 that Dennis has used will either do the trick as any more application would be pointless. His belly construction is now complete and will be able to hold up his new pants once I get back to the sewing aspect of t
his project. We just have a few clamps holding all secure until the final application of glue is dry. We had used the saber saw to work through the engineered vinyl. Oh ya . . . lots of itty bitty flicks and flakes to clean up. The basement cleanup was the last of the tenacity I had.
I will say that there is another gal that has tenacity. My sister-in-law JoAnn has faced so many challenges these last four months since Michael’s passing. We keep in close contact to encourage when we can, vent when it’s needed, sending out a high-five via a text . . . being family. Knowing JoAnn for 45 plus years, there is so much history of family that we can pick up on and many times just giggle.