1001

You wrote the 1000th post!  We've written 1000 posts.  We really did!

And you are an official therapist with an honest-to-God client!

Progress!

I remember the mimosa.  The way the leaves folded when we ran our fingers along the vein was fascinating.  And I remember stripping some of the leaves to use as Barbi-doll dollars.  And there was more than one chicken processing plant.  Do you remember how, once a week, they would burn feathers?  The whole town smelled putrid.  It took awhile to get used to it.  But eventually we became like the locals, and didn't really notice.  I remember someone catching an occasional escaped chicken.  Then it was interesting.  Now I think of its escape from terror into the unknown, and probably more terror - either captured by a predator or life alone, without a flock.

Things that stay with me from the dream is that there were things in the closets, stuffed on shelves that need to be cleaned out.  My room, in the front, did not have a closet.  But I know there were some in the back part of the house.  And then that front stairway.  I wonder what it was.  I always thought that front hall at the top of the stairs was haunted.  There was something cold there.  I hated going to bed, because there was no way to avoid it.  I always came up the back stairs, and through everyone's bedrooms.  It was safer than coming up the front stairs - especially alone...especially at night...I would stand in the doorway, at the threshhold of the girls' room, and rock back and forth on the balls of my feet, getting my nerve up.  Then I would race through the hall, through the little room outside my room, into my room, slam the door, pull the cord to turn on the light and dive on the bed.  Then I waited for my fear to cease, I opened a book and disappeared into a novel until I could no longer keep my eyes open.

That little room outside my room was S#5's nursery for awhile.  Then it was your room.  Tinya went back and forth between our rooms.  I used to come and steal her after you went to sleep.

So I need to clean the closets and throw ooky stuff away, and I need to cut the front door/front entryway wide open so coming and going becomes easily.

I don't remember using that front room much.  I don't remember ever using that front door.  I don't remember using the front stairs...I remember paneling was all the rage, and so Dad bought a few pieces of paneling to put on one wall, then wallpapered the rest of the room.  Himself.  He even wallpapered the ceiling.  The pieces were not aligned.  One piece was definitely diagonal.  I remember him cutting postage stamp sizes of wall paper to fill in the little spaces he missed.  I also remember him covering the front door with foil for Christmas, then putting a big red ribbon on it, so it looked like a package.  I think that was the year Mom let us mix dish liquid in tempera paints, and paint the front windows to look like stained glass.

Maybe your dream was prophetic...Maybe you'll be the last of us to die.  Maybe...Hope I didn't go first, although I would not wish that on anyone else...

It's finally Friday...Get to sleep as long as I need to tomorrow!

Love to you from Clare...