Look for Patterns
"I don’t usually do New Year’s resolutions. I know me too well."
After a year in which he stared at walls more than usual, David McLemore resolves to do more of the same, in a way. It’s one of the last instructions he got from his late wife; in 2021, David is going to look for the patterns.
by David McLemore
I don’t usually do New Year’s resolutions. I know me too well. Drink less, sleep more, eat healthier -- all things I know are beyond my limited abilities. But time and recent experience have led me to try one for 2021: Resolve to look for the patterns.
Yes, there is a story behind it.
Two nights before she died of leukemia on November 27, 2019, my beautiful Ginny, my child bride of 43 years, sat on the couch in our living room and called me over to sit by her. She was very tired but we sat side-by-side and she said, ‘Look at the wall,’ she said, pointing to the limestone above the door leading into the kitchen. ‘What do you see?’
Limestone, I said. ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Do you see ET, Just below the ceiling?’
ET? I’m sure I looked puzzled, then looked again, and there it was, a triangular bit of stone that appeared to look down to the left. And a face emerged. ‘Yes, I see it. He’s looking at us.’
She smiled. ‘Remember that. Always look for the patterns. They are always there. They will tell a story. Always look for the story.’ She reached out for my hand and we sat there quietly for a long moment. Then I helped her to bed.
I should point out that Ginny had an exceptional skill to see the way things, objects, life, shaped itself into patterns. In her 20s, she taught herself to weave, linking up the warp and weave of thin threads into intricate patterns in scarves and placemats. She also taught herself to quilt, concentrating on more complex patterns of interlocking pieces of material not much larger than a postage stamp. They are some of her most beautiful works.
But in honesty, I didn’t fully understand what she meant in that last conversation. Certainly she had no plans for me to weave or quilt. Clearly it was a message she felt she needed to convey. And I was too dense and locked in the moment to understand. The long parade of toxic shocks that the pandemic brought with 2020 did little to make me feel insightful. But now, maybe I’m ready to make that leap of understanding.
Ginny spent the months before she died gently guiding me to an awareness that life would go on without her, must go on without her. She pointed out her cookbooks, read to me from her favorite books, and shared her favorite music -- which would be both Taylor Swift and Leonard Cohen. But the image on the wall was her biggest message: that life is not chaos. Our lives are shaped by patterns that tell us stories, give us hints on directions to take. We may not always divine them correctly but we must always look for the patterns.
So that’s my resolution. Look for the patterns and find the path. Thanks, babe.
David McLemore has been a cab driver, a midnight-shift clerk in a convenience store, a janitor and, briefly, a soldier. For more than 30 years, he earned a living as an award-winning reporter with the San Antonio Express and then as San Antonio bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. He is the author of Soldier’s Joy: A Novel. This is his second contribution to The Experiment; his first was “What Life Has Become” in March 2020 after the pandemic hit. Follow him on Twitter at @dave_in_sa.
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