May: The one with a visitor, an anniversary and a death

For the rest of April and early May we settled into our new house, and welcomed in Spring. Grammy came to visit and we took her to see Multnomah Falls and explored some local trails and parks. Drew and I got to spend a night in Portland to celebrate our 12th anniversary while she stayed with the kids, which was great. We stayed at McMenamins Kennedy School, got pedicures, ate delicious pasta and burrata at Gumba and picked up ice cream from the original Salt and Straw on Alberta Street. We watched a Jazz game while sitting in the soaking pool, and saw Bill Wadhams (the lead singer for the 80s band Animotion) perform live.

Back home in Camas, we fell in love more and more with all the green beauty of our new Pacific Northwest surroundings, and experienced the annual spring bloom of the beautiful purple Camas Lilies. 

I found a local pottery studio, and took my first ceramics class there! I completed one ceramics course back in college, and had been yearning to try it again for years but never found the time or place to do it. I'm so glad I did. I instantly fell in love with the process of working with clay on the wheel. My first attempts were uneven and clumsy, but I didn't care. The joy of creating quickly developed into a new hobby and obsession that I am continuing to improve on week by week. It felt like I had discovered a missing part of myself.

Then in mid-May my Grandmother went into the hospital for a routine surgery, and it became clear within a few days that she would not make it through recovery. It was a terrible, horrible week of waiting, of wringing hands, of hoping and losing hope. And with the Covid restrictions for travel and hospital visitation being what they were, I had to accept that it would be best to stay home and not to try to return to see her one more time. After over a week of decline, we were very fortunate to be able to arrange for her to be brought home from the hospital on hospice care, and she passed away peacefully in her bedroom surrounded by loved ones shortly thereafter, just a week shy of her 93rd birthday. It's a loss and a grief that I am still coming to terms with. She helped to raise me in my early childhood while my mom finished her education, and my family shared her home for many years. Her house will always be home to me. She was home to me. But I know because of that, I will always take her with me wherever I am, and for that I am grateful.