I find that my own mood which by nature is upbeat is heavily influenced by how my dad and Kate are doing. I have had a number of very good days with Dad since returning from Chautauqua. I continue to enjoy life to its fullest with Kate. On the other hand, I do notice things happening with her that make me sad. One thing that does both is her working in the yard. She loves to get out and prune and plant. She continues to buy new plants even though we are now approaching the end of the summer season. What makes me sad is that I believe she does this because it is the only thing that she is able to do without suffering any frustration. It seems like just about everything she tries to do on her own ends up with a problem of some sort. I must admit that I also have a tendency to get irritated when she neglects things that she might do in favor of working in the yard. Then I stop and realize why she is doing it and feel sad that she is left to this limited area of activity. Then I feel happy that she has something like gardening that I hope she will be able to do for a long time to come.
Yesterday afternoon I arrived home just as an upholsterer was about to load all the cushions from the patio furniture into his truck. I told him that he was supposed to be getting the cushions from the kitchen, not the patio furniture. Kate had pointed him to the patio cushions and forgot completely about the cushions in the kitchen’s bay window. Today when we went to a shop to order new cushions for the patio furniture. Our decorator asked if the upholsterer had come by. Kate told her that he hadn’t. I corrected her. In a few minutes she told me she was glad that I had come in at that time. She said she had already embarrassed herself by forgetting the upholsterer had come yesterday.
Another sad moment came the other night as we were driving somewhere to dinner. I asked her how she was, and she told me she felt “secure” when she was with me. This made me feel good that she knows she can depend on me; however, it made me feel sad that she is insecure in so many situations. She really wants to do things independently. In fact, she sometimes tells me that she can do something that I took the initiative of helping her with. As I indicated earlier, when she starts on something it becomes a problem for her. Here is one example. She wanted to do send an email to a friend from Denver who is coming to visit us next week. She could never get around to doing it. I ended up writing the email and sending it from Kate’s computer so that our friend would see it came from Kate and not me.
