There’s something about a heavy snowfall that puts you in the realm of the eternal. Today in Washington, we experienced a record-breaking snowfall, and the snow is now, at 11 PM on Saturday evening, hip deep in many places. I went out and shoveled at around 10 AM, figuring it’s easier to shovel seven inches at a time than 25 or so all at once, but didn’t get out again until about an hour ago. I’ve been holed up in my den, working on a power-point presentation I’ll have to give at work on Tuesday. Work has been very tough lately (I’ll spare you the details, but will instead refer you to a single line of voiceover narration describing the life of George Bailey: “Potter was bearing down hard.”), and it’s been a season of sadness for me. Between bouts of power-pointing, I’ve spent time on the phone with my sweetheart and two of my sibs, and of course communing with my favorite boy, Murphy.
But then I went outside. It’s quiet and peaceful, and everything is still. The snow is sparkly, and I saw only a few people walking down the middle of the street. I pushed the snow off my car, did a little more shoveling (my 20-something neighbor did our whole section of the block around dinnertime, bless him), and then just stopped. What a gift it is to be outside at night in the snow. I looked back at my house, and it looked like a place of light and warmth and safety.
3326
One year during the Christmas season, when I was a teenager, we experienced a heavy, sparkly snow in Parma not unlike this one. Unlike now, I lived in a house full of people, with my brothers, sister and mother. There was always a lot going on and, more often than not, the TV was blaring. This particular night, as the family sat around the living room and the kitchen, kvetching, talking, doing whatever it was we normally did, I put on my coat and went outside. Like now, the ground was covered with snow, which was still falling. I walked down the driveway away from the house and sat on the back fender of Mom’s car. Though when I looked over my shoulder, the Christmas tree and the life within the living room were visible in the picture window, not a sound could be heard from inside the house. Outside it was silent, save for one thing: up on the hill, some family was piping Christmas music out into the night. It was played with bells, a pure and simple arrangement—no chords, just the simple one-note-at-a-time melodies of one wonder-filled contemplative song of the season after another. No one was outside on the street but me.
That moment sealed itself in my heart forevermore. I was out in the night, feeling the presence of God herself, helped by the soft Christmas music that in the happiest of times sets up a vague sense of longing in one’s soul, and behind me, in that house, were my people-- those with whom I shared my daily life and without whom, despite the seemingly unmitigated fractiousness of the relationships, I would have been lost. Right there inside that little glowing box known as 3326, stood the Christmas tree and all I knew or had of family, at least in a day-in and day-out sense. They were so solid, so real, such a pain in the ass, and so essential to my being. Of course, what I felt most consciously at the time was that I was apart from them, and the kind of person who spiritually belonged outside in the dark, sitting in the cold and beautiful snow, having God’s music piped into my soul—or maybe it was coming from inside me, and I just thought it was coming from up the hill….
But what I know now is that I was blessed to have them, and although we’re all outside in the dark within ourselves, experiencing the wonder of being, knowing there’s a warm, bright place wherein our people reside and are ready to welcome us back in-- indeed, may not have even noticed we were gone—is a gift that I for one treasure, and try to remember especially in these difficult times.
Tonight, when I looked back at my house, I was pleased to see that I had created for myself, my kitty, and all my loved ones who enter, a place of warmth and light and shelter from various kinds of storms, however pretty (or petty) some of them may be. And though this night there is no Christmas tree and I am here alone with the Murphster, I know all those loved ones, wherever they are, living or dead, are with me here.
I went back into the house and got my camera. When there’s a good snowfall, I always get the idea to take a really nice shot of the house with the intention of maybe creating a photo Christmas card the following year. I have yet to do that, but I did take a shot or two. I want to post one here, but Blogger's photo upload doesn't seem to be working for me right now. Oh, well, I'll try again tomorrow....
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Free-form Writing
Tonight I’ll do an exercise in free-form writing. I could come up with many different subjects to write about, but I want to just open the conduits. On Sunday an obituary caught my eye. It was about a 45-year-old woman who died of a brain aneurysm, and who recently had an essay published in the literary magazine Shenandoah. The obituary also made mention of Gettysburg Review. So I looked them up on the internet and discovered, or rediscovered, the world of small-press literary magazines. I remember them from college, or particularly well-stocked newsstands, and have looked through them on occasion, but never really picked one up and read it carefully. Reading the submission requirements on some of them, you can tell that tons of people are hopefully submitting their most heartfelt writings, and the people who read the submissions have had to slog through what they have felt was a lot of crap. Reading that none of them accept anything that’s been published in any medium made me feel like, oh shit, I’ve already put my best stuff on my blog, and used up some of the subjects that I feel the impulse to write about most strongly, and now I’ll have to scrape up other stuff if I have any hope of being published in a literary magazine. What if my well is about to run dry? The obituary said this woman’s essay in Shenandoah, titled "Ugly", about her having felt unattractive her whole life, garnered calls from a couple of literary agents wanting her to write a book. Wow, I thought.
But the thing is, this is kind of what I envisioned happening when I started my blog. I figured somewhere in the back of my head, and maybe not so far in the back-- but it was never the main thing-- that my blog was going to get attention from someone who would want to publish my writing in some more permanent form. But the doing the blog is itself the act of publishing it in a pretty permanent form. It could be that only seven people have read it—other than myself—but the impetus for writing it is the act of testifying to what it means to be human in the world-- one person’s experience in the 20th and 21st centuries. To say, I was here, I lived, and I experienced these things. If anyone at all reads them and is moved to laugh or cry (a lot more crying, I am guessing and have been told, than laughing—at this point, anyway), then it has been worth doing and I can die knowing I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. The sense of satisfaction I get when I feel I’ve expressed myself well is real and profound.
But it would be nice to get some sort of offer from the larger world, wouldn’t it? On days when work is particularly hairy and unpleasant, like the past couple of days (not coincidentally, right after getting the literary magazine idea), I walk around the office thinking how great it would be for all the people on my floor, including all those who are in the wordsmithing and publishing business to hear, oh, did you know that Cher Stepanek, who works over there in that department, has a book coming out? Wow, she writes? Why, The Big Boss asks, isn’t she working for me in some literary capacity? Why have we not recognized her talents; why have we been letting her languish in Department X?
It’s what everyone wants, isn’t it? We are all walking around knowing deep in our bones we’re special, we have something wonderful about ourselves that none of the people we see and interact with every day knows about. Wouldn’t it be great, we think, if one day they realized who we really are? Wouldn’t it be great if they found out, too, that we have this secret life in which our talents are well developed, well realized, and recognized by this whole huge group of others, yet somehow they, the people we see and interact with every day, have missed it? To be recognized as special: it’s what we all want, and I want it too. That is aside from the impulse, and I want to call it a purer impulse, to say what I want and need to say, to put it out there for (theoretically) all the world to see on the internet, and then go about my life not really tracking who is actually seeing it. I'm thinking that maybe it’s kind of an adolescent wish, that need to be recognized as special. It’s the wish of someone who has not yet learned or realized their own best way of making their mark in the world. Or maybe it's one of the stigmata borne by children of divorced parents. Or maybe it’s universal, but people just stop admitting it, or get too beaten down to remember they felt it.
I have set my self this evening the task of writing for fifteen minutes nonstop, and am almost finished. There, it’s done.
But the thing is, this is kind of what I envisioned happening when I started my blog. I figured somewhere in the back of my head, and maybe not so far in the back-- but it was never the main thing-- that my blog was going to get attention from someone who would want to publish my writing in some more permanent form. But the doing the blog is itself the act of publishing it in a pretty permanent form. It could be that only seven people have read it—other than myself—but the impetus for writing it is the act of testifying to what it means to be human in the world-- one person’s experience in the 20th and 21st centuries. To say, I was here, I lived, and I experienced these things. If anyone at all reads them and is moved to laugh or cry (a lot more crying, I am guessing and have been told, than laughing—at this point, anyway), then it has been worth doing and I can die knowing I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. The sense of satisfaction I get when I feel I’ve expressed myself well is real and profound.
But it would be nice to get some sort of offer from the larger world, wouldn’t it? On days when work is particularly hairy and unpleasant, like the past couple of days (not coincidentally, right after getting the literary magazine idea), I walk around the office thinking how great it would be for all the people on my floor, including all those who are in the wordsmithing and publishing business to hear, oh, did you know that Cher Stepanek, who works over there in that department, has a book coming out? Wow, she writes? Why, The Big Boss asks, isn’t she working for me in some literary capacity? Why have we not recognized her talents; why have we been letting her languish in Department X?
It’s what everyone wants, isn’t it? We are all walking around knowing deep in our bones we’re special, we have something wonderful about ourselves that none of the people we see and interact with every day knows about. Wouldn’t it be great, we think, if one day they realized who we really are? Wouldn’t it be great if they found out, too, that we have this secret life in which our talents are well developed, well realized, and recognized by this whole huge group of others, yet somehow they, the people we see and interact with every day, have missed it? To be recognized as special: it’s what we all want, and I want it too. That is aside from the impulse, and I want to call it a purer impulse, to say what I want and need to say, to put it out there for (theoretically) all the world to see on the internet, and then go about my life not really tracking who is actually seeing it. I'm thinking that maybe it’s kind of an adolescent wish, that need to be recognized as special. It’s the wish of someone who has not yet learned or realized their own best way of making their mark in the world. Or maybe it's one of the stigmata borne by children of divorced parents. Or maybe it’s universal, but people just stop admitting it, or get too beaten down to remember they felt it.
I have set my self this evening the task of writing for fifteen minutes nonstop, and am almost finished. There, it’s done.
Friday, August 14, 2009
3326
What the Light Would Do, Part III
Kitchen, Late Afternoon/Early Evening
The kitchen in the house I grew up in had two windows. One faced north and the other faced west. Although the house was built as a part of a 1950s post-war tract housing development, each of the nearly identical houses was set a little forward or back of the house next to it. Because of this, the kitchen was directly exposed to the setting sun, and in the late afternoon or early evening, strong western light would enter in through the window over the sink and fill the kitchen with a red-gold glow. The sun shone directly onto the kitchen table, and unless your back was to the window, it would be in your eyes. My mother would often draw the shade on that window in the evening, but I always liked the kitchen best when it was ablaze with evening sun, even if blinded me and made it uncomfortable to see and interact with other people at the table. Somehow the western sky and the golden glow made the kitchen feel a part of something large and dramatic and expansive. It signaled, too, that a large part of the day’s activities had been completed (successfully, satisfyingly), yet the greater part of the evening was yet to come, and there was still time to drink deeply of this day.
In that western window, the proverbial window over the sink, my mother had a few potted plants. The window sills were not very deep, so they were of necessity small plants in small containers. The cast of characters on that window sill changed a little over the years, but there were three or four plants that made their home on that window sill for a long, long time. The younger of my two brothers was born in 1957, and as a new baby gift, a friend had given my parents a cute little ceramic planter shaped like a telephone, containing a small, short-variety sansevieria. The volume of this planter had to be no larger than that of your average bone-china teacup—but that snake plant sat on that window sill in that planter for 48 years, growing the entire time. The planter did not even have a drainage hole, and at some point after the first decade or so, I’m sure the soil, or what was left of it, became completely depleted. But there it grew. At the time my mother moved, in 2005, there were two other snake plants, of the taller variety, that had probably inhabited that sunny window sill for a couple of decades at least, along with a tired-looking purple tradescantia.
A month or two after my mother passed away earlier this year, I took a deep breath and repotted those four plants. I selected beautiful purple, periwinkle, aqua and green planters, shocked the heck out of the plants by removing them from their too-tight but very broken-in shoes, and potted them up with fresh soil and plenty of room to grow. Having no properly sunny window sills that would accommodate them at home, I’ve taken them to my office. I have a northern exposure there, but the building is skewed to the west just enough so that at this time of year, the setting western sun comes streaming in. After a few weeks of confusion, the plants have begun to get used to their new home and green up. There are new leaves on all of them (the contents of the little telephone planter having been split into three separate but color-coordinated pots), and sometimes they seem to be smiling as they bask in the deep golden setting sun. I love looking at them, because they remind me of that kitchen, and because they speak of longevity and survival. At the close of the work day, when the sun is filling the back of my office with strong, golden light, I remember what the late afternoon and early evening was like in Parma Ohio, in a kitchen that seemed a part of something large and dramatic and expansive. It feels good to know it’s the same sun, shining on the same plants. I wonder how long they’ll be in this set of pots.
Kitchen, Late Afternoon/Early Evening
The kitchen in the house I grew up in had two windows. One faced north and the other faced west. Although the house was built as a part of a 1950s post-war tract housing development, each of the nearly identical houses was set a little forward or back of the house next to it. Because of this, the kitchen was directly exposed to the setting sun, and in the late afternoon or early evening, strong western light would enter in through the window over the sink and fill the kitchen with a red-gold glow. The sun shone directly onto the kitchen table, and unless your back was to the window, it would be in your eyes. My mother would often draw the shade on that window in the evening, but I always liked the kitchen best when it was ablaze with evening sun, even if blinded me and made it uncomfortable to see and interact with other people at the table. Somehow the western sky and the golden glow made the kitchen feel a part of something large and dramatic and expansive. It signaled, too, that a large part of the day’s activities had been completed (successfully, satisfyingly), yet the greater part of the evening was yet to come, and there was still time to drink deeply of this day.
In that western window, the proverbial window over the sink, my mother had a few potted plants. The window sills were not very deep, so they were of necessity small plants in small containers. The cast of characters on that window sill changed a little over the years, but there were three or four plants that made their home on that window sill for a long, long time. The younger of my two brothers was born in 1957, and as a new baby gift, a friend had given my parents a cute little ceramic planter shaped like a telephone, containing a small, short-variety sansevieria. The volume of this planter had to be no larger than that of your average bone-china teacup—but that snake plant sat on that window sill in that planter for 48 years, growing the entire time. The planter did not even have a drainage hole, and at some point after the first decade or so, I’m sure the soil, or what was left of it, became completely depleted. But there it grew. At the time my mother moved, in 2005, there were two other snake plants, of the taller variety, that had probably inhabited that sunny window sill for a couple of decades at least, along with a tired-looking purple tradescantia.
A month or two after my mother passed away earlier this year, I took a deep breath and repotted those four plants. I selected beautiful purple, periwinkle, aqua and green planters, shocked the heck out of the plants by removing them from their too-tight but very broken-in shoes, and potted them up with fresh soil and plenty of room to grow. Having no properly sunny window sills that would accommodate them at home, I’ve taken them to my office. I have a northern exposure there, but the building is skewed to the west just enough so that at this time of year, the setting western sun comes streaming in. After a few weeks of confusion, the plants have begun to get used to their new home and green up. There are new leaves on all of them (the contents of the little telephone planter having been split into three separate but color-coordinated pots), and sometimes they seem to be smiling as they bask in the deep golden setting sun. I love looking at them, because they remind me of that kitchen, and because they speak of longevity and survival. At the close of the work day, when the sun is filling the back of my office with strong, golden light, I remember what the late afternoon and early evening was like in Parma Ohio, in a kitchen that seemed a part of something large and dramatic and expansive. It feels good to know it’s the same sun, shining on the same plants. I wonder how long they’ll be in this set of pots.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Winter in August
Summer has finally kicked in in earnest here in Washington, but today I’m thinking about a moment in time deep in the middle of a Cleveland winter in my very early childhood. We had recently moved to 3326. Although I don’t remember the year, or exactly how old I was, it must have been sometime during the winter spanning 1956/57. The snow was heavy on the ground, and it was after dark. Our family had a sled with a removable upright back and sides, so that small children could sit supported in the sled and be pulled with the long loop of rope that was affixed to the sled’s front. The younger of my two younger siblings, both brothers, had not yet been born or was too young to participate, and so it came to pass on this particular snowy evening that my parents piled my sister (the oldest, and heading up the back of the sled), me (in the middle, acting out in real time and space the role of middle child), and then my brother (in front of me, smaller and nestled against the front of my puffy gray and navy snowsuit) into the sled for a ride around the neighborhood.
It was cold and dark, but only as dark as it can be with the ground completely white and streetlamps shining their light on the soft sparkly snow. My father, wearing a formal man’s overcoat, thick leather gloves and no hat, pulled the sled out into the driveway and down the apron to the street. I marveled at how big and strong he was—it seemed unfathomable that he could pull a sled with three people in it. He was my father. He was big and strong and capable. He would take care of me as I felt my sister hug me and as I hugged my brother, snugly tucked into our warm clothes and the safety of the guard-railed sled. The world was cold and icy, but a place of wonder nonetheless. The street was quiet, and there were no cars on the road this evening—the snow must have been so heavy that day that it drove everyone inside and kept them there. My father pulled the sled into the street, where passing cars had earlier packed the snow into slicker, smoother, and icier tracks on which to pull the sled. Keep your hands inside, kids, he said, we’re going for a ride! He began to run, pulling the sled behind him. He seemed very far away, since he was so tall and far from the ground, compared to my small huddled nearness to all that snow and ice, close enough to touch if I had not heeded my father’s warning to keep my hands tucked in and safe. The windows in the houses we passed on either side of the street glowed from within. Whatever sounds there might have been in the larger world were muffled, as they are in a heavy snow, and all I heard was the smooth sound of our sled runners moving over the packed snow and my father’s crunchy steps as he ran. He would slow to a brisk walk from time to time, both to catch his breath and to see how we were faring in our sled. I could see his breath escaping in cloudy puffs as he looked back at us. Before long, he’d run again. He pulled us all around the block, running most of the way to make sure we had the most fun possible. I hoped it would never end.
I have not made a list of the happiest moments of my life—I’m not the kind of person who makes lists like that, and I would hate to rank those moments. Nevertheless, even though I was no more than four years old when it happened, that ride around the block is right up there with the top ten.
It was cold and dark, but only as dark as it can be with the ground completely white and streetlamps shining their light on the soft sparkly snow. My father, wearing a formal man’s overcoat, thick leather gloves and no hat, pulled the sled out into the driveway and down the apron to the street. I marveled at how big and strong he was—it seemed unfathomable that he could pull a sled with three people in it. He was my father. He was big and strong and capable. He would take care of me as I felt my sister hug me and as I hugged my brother, snugly tucked into our warm clothes and the safety of the guard-railed sled. The world was cold and icy, but a place of wonder nonetheless. The street was quiet, and there were no cars on the road this evening—the snow must have been so heavy that day that it drove everyone inside and kept them there. My father pulled the sled into the street, where passing cars had earlier packed the snow into slicker, smoother, and icier tracks on which to pull the sled. Keep your hands inside, kids, he said, we’re going for a ride! He began to run, pulling the sled behind him. He seemed very far away, since he was so tall and far from the ground, compared to my small huddled nearness to all that snow and ice, close enough to touch if I had not heeded my father’s warning to keep my hands tucked in and safe. The windows in the houses we passed on either side of the street glowed from within. Whatever sounds there might have been in the larger world were muffled, as they are in a heavy snow, and all I heard was the smooth sound of our sled runners moving over the packed snow and my father’s crunchy steps as he ran. He would slow to a brisk walk from time to time, both to catch his breath and to see how we were faring in our sled. I could see his breath escaping in cloudy puffs as he looked back at us. Before long, he’d run again. He pulled us all around the block, running most of the way to make sure we had the most fun possible. I hoped it would never end.
I have not made a list of the happiest moments of my life—I’m not the kind of person who makes lists like that, and I would hate to rank those moments. Nevertheless, even though I was no more than four years old when it happened, that ride around the block is right up there with the top ten.
The Rainbow Ballroom
I took the day off from work last Monday, the day after my birthday. It was partly to give myself a day away from the grind, and partly to spend the day handling some paperwork regarding my mother’s estate, Monday’s bit being the most complicated piece thus far. On my way to visit with the financial advisor who’d be helping me with the documents, I found myself thinking again of my mother’s last months, and running through the decisions that were made along the way. I know that what was done was done, and all was exactly as it needed to be for whatever mysterious karmic reasons there may be for these things, but in my worse moments I find myself second-guessing decisions I made or participated in. Did I absolutely do everything I could? Did I ask the right questions; hold enough of the right medical personnel accountable? Would she still be here if I had not recommended and advocated a move to a safer environment, closer to me? As the internal torture session began, I came to a moment when I thought, no, you can’t go through this again. This must stop at some point. That’s when I made a decision.
Lately I’ve had occasion to think about the Rainbow Bridge, since both my sister and cousin have mentioned it in relation to Murphy’s condition. It’s a place we can imagine our departed companion animals, whole and happy again. So right then and there while walking down the street, I founded the Rainbow Ballroom. It’s a place where my mother is young and dancing, where the room is full of dance partners, and every one is a man who knows how to dance, and who is imbued with the qualities of tenderness, light-heartedness, constancy and loyalty, who means what he says, doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean, and keeps his promises. Each one vies for her hand, and her heart is open to them. Every evening there is a dance, and every evening she’s there, dancing the tango, the rumba, and all those other dances she used to try to teach me in our kitchen when I was a kid. When she’s not at the Rainbow Ballroom, she may be in the Rainbow Rehearsal Room, working out the steps to a new routine or teaching the hopelessly klutzy to be as graceful as she. Or she may be on stage at the Rainbow Theatre, in the world’s most precise chorus line, kicking high or doing the soft shoe with hat and cane. Other times, she’s at the Rainbow Folk Festival, in full Ukrainian regalia, her thick and shiny brown hair bouncing softly and loosely as she dances. She is smiling. She’s the greatest among all the great dancers there, and she’s laughing with delight. Some evenings at the Rainbow Theatre, she’s the featured singer, and her most famous numbers are Besame Mucho and I Wish I Knew, the A and B sides of a record she cut in a penny arcade as a young woman, full of hope and promise. Roses are thrown at her feet, thousands cheer, and she owns the town.
So as of today, no more will I see her in her bed in Room #65 at the rehab center. From now on, she’ll be dancing at the Rainbow Ballroom.
Lately I’ve had occasion to think about the Rainbow Bridge, since both my sister and cousin have mentioned it in relation to Murphy’s condition. It’s a place we can imagine our departed companion animals, whole and happy again. So right then and there while walking down the street, I founded the Rainbow Ballroom. It’s a place where my mother is young and dancing, where the room is full of dance partners, and every one is a man who knows how to dance, and who is imbued with the qualities of tenderness, light-heartedness, constancy and loyalty, who means what he says, doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean, and keeps his promises. Each one vies for her hand, and her heart is open to them. Every evening there is a dance, and every evening she’s there, dancing the tango, the rumba, and all those other dances she used to try to teach me in our kitchen when I was a kid. When she’s not at the Rainbow Ballroom, she may be in the Rainbow Rehearsal Room, working out the steps to a new routine or teaching the hopelessly klutzy to be as graceful as she. Or she may be on stage at the Rainbow Theatre, in the world’s most precise chorus line, kicking high or doing the soft shoe with hat and cane. Other times, she’s at the Rainbow Folk Festival, in full Ukrainian regalia, her thick and shiny brown hair bouncing softly and loosely as she dances. She is smiling. She’s the greatest among all the great dancers there, and she’s laughing with delight. Some evenings at the Rainbow Theatre, she’s the featured singer, and her most famous numbers are Besame Mucho and I Wish I Knew, the A and B sides of a record she cut in a penny arcade as a young woman, full of hope and promise. Roses are thrown at her feet, thousands cheer, and she owns the town.
So as of today, no more will I see her in her bed in Room #65 at the rehab center. From now on, she’ll be dancing at the Rainbow Ballroom.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Keeping On
This afternoon I came upon check registers from a bank account my mother had from 1988 until she moved from Parma to Maryland, in 2005. In 1988 she would have been 66 or 67 years old, and still six or seven years from retirement. I see her paycheck deposits from that time, and I note the progression of her income in the raises she received over the years as the amount of these deposits steadily rose. I wonder what these paychecks would be worth in today’s dollars. I find out for the first time that The Cutting Room is name of the salon at which she’d get her hair done every week with religious regularity. I track the mergers and acquisitions of the supermarket chain she patronized, as the name she wrote on her checks for groceries changed at least twice during that time. I note with a smile that the spouses of children received the same amount of Christmas money in their checks as the actual biological children, but long-time unmarried life partners, such as Alex, were discounted some 40%. No surprise there—despite being divorced, my mother proclaimed wholeheartedly her belief in marriage. I fast forward to the later years, and I see the handwriting grow tiny and shaky, a terrible graphic testament to the Parkinson’s that robbed her of her vigor and eventually her life.
She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2004, but she had confided to me a year earlier that she suspected she had it. It took her almost two years of doctor visits before any doctor was willing to make that diagnosis. These check registers show that she had it as early as 2001, and possibly sooner. I wonder if any of her doctors at the time had asked to see her handwriting. I wonder that I did not notice it on the random birthday card or Christmas card and hear an alarm bell—not that early detection would have cured the condition or even slowed its progression. The small, shaky script has been very hard for me to look at without a stab of pain since I first noticed it. Nevertheless, these check registers also give testimony to the fact that she soldiered on, despite all. I think I’ll keep them for now.
She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2004, but she had confided to me a year earlier that she suspected she had it. It took her almost two years of doctor visits before any doctor was willing to make that diagnosis. These check registers show that she had it as early as 2001, and possibly sooner. I wonder if any of her doctors at the time had asked to see her handwriting. I wonder that I did not notice it on the random birthday card or Christmas card and hear an alarm bell—not that early detection would have cured the condition or even slowed its progression. The small, shaky script has been very hard for me to look at without a stab of pain since I first noticed it. Nevertheless, these check registers also give testimony to the fact that she soldiered on, despite all. I think I’ll keep them for now.
An Inexact Science
It’s an inexact science, this sorting through my mother’s stuff, trying to decide, or to feel, what to keep and what to let go. Here’s a box full of almost nothing but greeting cards. Some have photos inside, and some of the photos feature my mother. Those I’ll keep, of course. What about the cards that held them? Cards are manufactured things, but they all have personal greetings, some long and heartfelt, others seemingly perfunctory. And some are more than 50 years old. I’ve been around archivists enough to know that paper ephemera say something meaningful about the material culture of our time to scholars and historians, so the old ones, I’ll keep—but if kept long enough, they will all one day be old.
What to do with all those signed cards? How many Christmas cards over how many years are sufficient for me to memorialize that my mother lived through many Christmases, and shared the joy of each with her friends and family? Is the measure of any one card’s value how much the sender meant to my mother, or to me? If there are many cards from a given party, does any one of their cards have lesser value than a card signed by someone who only sent her a card once in her life, or more? What about the card she sent to her friend of over 80 years that was returned to her, because the friend’s son had her transferred to another care facility and failed to notify his mother’s gal pals of her whereabouts? That returned card is in there too, and tells a story that was decades in the making and ended sadly, with neither friend knowing what eventually became of the other. How can I simply trash it?
I sift and I sort, saving some and deciding some will go into the recycling, with a silent affirmation that they will no doubt be turned into more greeting cards that someone in the future will send, receive and cherish. I encourage myself to get rid of as many as possible, because, after all, they are only greeting cards. Some I can’t yet jettison. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps in time the energy I feel as I hold and read them will lessen, and they too will have their substance sent back into the moving stream of sentiments that is the recycled greeting card industry, or be turned into wonderful, life-changing books, or common everyday printer paper. I can’t say why I choose to keep some and let go of others. Every one that I let go of lightens the burden of stuff, but shrinks the evidence of my mother’s participation in the rituals of day to day life. It’s an inexact science, this sorting through my mother’s stuff.
What to do with all those signed cards? How many Christmas cards over how many years are sufficient for me to memorialize that my mother lived through many Christmases, and shared the joy of each with her friends and family? Is the measure of any one card’s value how much the sender meant to my mother, or to me? If there are many cards from a given party, does any one of their cards have lesser value than a card signed by someone who only sent her a card once in her life, or more? What about the card she sent to her friend of over 80 years that was returned to her, because the friend’s son had her transferred to another care facility and failed to notify his mother’s gal pals of her whereabouts? That returned card is in there too, and tells a story that was decades in the making and ended sadly, with neither friend knowing what eventually became of the other. How can I simply trash it?
I sift and I sort, saving some and deciding some will go into the recycling, with a silent affirmation that they will no doubt be turned into more greeting cards that someone in the future will send, receive and cherish. I encourage myself to get rid of as many as possible, because, after all, they are only greeting cards. Some I can’t yet jettison. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps in time the energy I feel as I hold and read them will lessen, and they too will have their substance sent back into the moving stream of sentiments that is the recycled greeting card industry, or be turned into wonderful, life-changing books, or common everyday printer paper. I can’t say why I choose to keep some and let go of others. Every one that I let go of lightens the burden of stuff, but shrinks the evidence of my mother’s participation in the rituals of day to day life. It’s an inexact science, this sorting through my mother’s stuff.
Our Infinite Perfectibility/Our Perfection
Alex and I had lunch with a very dear friend today. Jan has a special relationship with Murphy (he put a major hole in her leg during his early years, when he was still learning how to be civilized), and she wanted to visit him. Over lunch, as usual, we talked about our work, our personal lives, the ongoing health care debate, the health of the society and the planet, our progress through life, and what sort of response is called for by the times we live in. I came away with a clearer sense of where I am in my world and how I’m going to tackle the issues that are facing me now, mostly with respect to Murphy’s care. I also came away with a deep appreciation of my friend Jan and the way she has supported me, and allowed me to support her, through all the years that I’ve known her.
After I arrived home and said my goodbyes to both Jan and Alex, I turned my attention to the boxes of stuff I brought home from my mother’s apartment last spring, determined to make good on my resolution to work through them by the end of summer. I spied one that I knew contained the contents of an end-table drawer in her living room. Good, I thought, that one will be easy. It doesn’t contain anything too personal or too emotionally fraught. Sorting through it, I’ve found maps (over a dozen road maps of Ohio, and a healthy representation of each state in which her children live); more decks of cards than I ever knew she had, including a couple that I vividly remember playing with; two sets of coasters that must have been the fruits of under-$5.00 gift exchanges at work; and many, many brochures, booklets and articles cut from newspapers about high blood pressure, osteoporosis, eating right, exercise, local programs for seniors, herbal and holistic remedies, personal finance, and home improvement. That was my mother. She never stopped looking for new ways to get better and be better. There wasn’t a newspaper article about health and fitness-- including financial fitness and house and garden fitness-- that ever escaped her attention. She never lost her essentially optimistic belief or interest in the perfectibility of the human enterprise, and she never stopped trying to attain that perfection—even if her effort sometimes went no further than cutting and saving the information. The contents of the box may not have been very personal or emotionally fraught, but they brought home one aspect of Vicki Stepanek that I knew very, very well.
I smile because, seeing my mother’s better living archives so soon after sharing a heartfelt powwow on life over lunch with people I love on a perfectly archetypal late July day, I know that she didn’t have to strive so hard for that perfection. None of us do. We are perfect just as we are.
After I arrived home and said my goodbyes to both Jan and Alex, I turned my attention to the boxes of stuff I brought home from my mother’s apartment last spring, determined to make good on my resolution to work through them by the end of summer. I spied one that I knew contained the contents of an end-table drawer in her living room. Good, I thought, that one will be easy. It doesn’t contain anything too personal or too emotionally fraught. Sorting through it, I’ve found maps (over a dozen road maps of Ohio, and a healthy representation of each state in which her children live); more decks of cards than I ever knew she had, including a couple that I vividly remember playing with; two sets of coasters that must have been the fruits of under-$5.00 gift exchanges at work; and many, many brochures, booklets and articles cut from newspapers about high blood pressure, osteoporosis, eating right, exercise, local programs for seniors, herbal and holistic remedies, personal finance, and home improvement. That was my mother. She never stopped looking for new ways to get better and be better. There wasn’t a newspaper article about health and fitness-- including financial fitness and house and garden fitness-- that ever escaped her attention. She never lost her essentially optimistic belief or interest in the perfectibility of the human enterprise, and she never stopped trying to attain that perfection—even if her effort sometimes went no further than cutting and saving the information. The contents of the box may not have been very personal or emotionally fraught, but they brought home one aspect of Vicki Stepanek that I knew very, very well.
I smile because, seeing my mother’s better living archives so soon after sharing a heartfelt powwow on life over lunch with people I love on a perfectly archetypal late July day, I know that she didn’t have to strive so hard for that perfection. None of us do. We are perfect just as we are.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Connections
Spring has given way to high summer, and although this July is cooler than normal, the weather leaves no doubt that we are moving further away from that cruellest month with every week that goes by. In recent weeks I have made major changes to my little backyard garden, entertained my visiting Brazilian goddaughter, and hosted my sister on a couple visits to my place, one to accompany me to an appointment with an estate attorney. I’m sure I’ll say more about these things in later entries, but I’m thinking about my cat Murphy today. This morning I took him to a veterinary ENT specialist. He’ll be having a CT scan and surgery tomorrow for an obstruction in his nasal cavity or nasopharynx, and the vet prepared me for fact that it might very possibly be a malignant tumor. Certainly, we’ll deal with that once we know for certain if that’s the case, but for now I feel immense relief that he will finally be getting some effective help and, whatever else comes of this, will be breathing more easily once he recovers from the surgery.
I am thinking about a moment of realization I had a few months after I moved into this house. Before becoming a homeowner, I had been living in a two-room apartment, had been catless for two and a half years, and was not in a relationship. Then I bought this house. I moved in the first weekend of May, and by late winter, early the following year, I had acquired Murphy as well as a tenant for my spare bedroom and her cat, and had begun to date Alex. I clearly remember one night during a severe thunderstorm when Alex was visiting, which meant I had two humans and two cats under my roof as well as myself. I lay awake listening to the wind beat against the house and rattle the tin roof, thinking to myself with amazement, I have a houseful of people and animals for whom, since they are all in a house I own, I am responsible. Less than a year earlier, I was a woman about whom it could be said that if I had disappeared on a Friday evening, there would have been a good chance no one would have known about it till I failed to show up at work the following Monday morning. No cat, no boyfriend, no roommate, no roommate cat, no house, no one and nothing for whom to be responsible; no front-line, day-in-and-day-out connections in this world at all. Anyone whom I loved or who loved me, far away and taking care of themselves. Perfect freedom.
It’s been a rough road watching Murphy get sicker despite visits to two other vets before this, and struggling to get him to swallow any number of pills, powders and drops, when all I would have hoped to do with Murphy at this point in this challenging year is play with him, snuggle with him, and watch him tussle with his buddy Lucky. Loving and taking care of people (and I count Murphy as one of my people) is hard work, and I’ve had my share of watching people go off their food for one lifetime in this year alone. Murphy has been at Alex’s place for the past few days, and I’d be lying if I said not having to listen to him struggle for breath since Sunday has enabled me to calm down a bit and rather enjoy some inner and outer quiet. But of course I wouldn’t trade that connection, as heartbreaking as these connections inevitably are, for all the quietude in the world. There may be freedom in being unconnected by bonds of loving obligation to other living things, in not having the responsibility for anyone or anything other than oneself, but having experienced that, I’ll take this, thank you.
I am thinking about a moment of realization I had a few months after I moved into this house. Before becoming a homeowner, I had been living in a two-room apartment, had been catless for two and a half years, and was not in a relationship. Then I bought this house. I moved in the first weekend of May, and by late winter, early the following year, I had acquired Murphy as well as a tenant for my spare bedroom and her cat, and had begun to date Alex. I clearly remember one night during a severe thunderstorm when Alex was visiting, which meant I had two humans and two cats under my roof as well as myself. I lay awake listening to the wind beat against the house and rattle the tin roof, thinking to myself with amazement, I have a houseful of people and animals for whom, since they are all in a house I own, I am responsible. Less than a year earlier, I was a woman about whom it could be said that if I had disappeared on a Friday evening, there would have been a good chance no one would have known about it till I failed to show up at work the following Monday morning. No cat, no boyfriend, no roommate, no roommate cat, no house, no one and nothing for whom to be responsible; no front-line, day-in-and-day-out connections in this world at all. Anyone whom I loved or who loved me, far away and taking care of themselves. Perfect freedom.
It’s been a rough road watching Murphy get sicker despite visits to two other vets before this, and struggling to get him to swallow any number of pills, powders and drops, when all I would have hoped to do with Murphy at this point in this challenging year is play with him, snuggle with him, and watch him tussle with his buddy Lucky. Loving and taking care of people (and I count Murphy as one of my people) is hard work, and I’ve had my share of watching people go off their food for one lifetime in this year alone. Murphy has been at Alex’s place for the past few days, and I’d be lying if I said not having to listen to him struggle for breath since Sunday has enabled me to calm down a bit and rather enjoy some inner and outer quiet. But of course I wouldn’t trade that connection, as heartbreaking as these connections inevitably are, for all the quietude in the world. There may be freedom in being unconnected by bonds of loving obligation to other living things, in not having the responsibility for anyone or anything other than oneself, but having experienced that, I’ll take this, thank you.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
3326
What the Light Would Do, Part II
Bedroom, Evening
As the sun would fade from the sky at the end of the day, I would sometimes look out my upstairs bedroom windows to the east. Our street and the several parallel streets adjacent to it ended in a big woods with a deep ravine and stream running through it. Looking out that east window in the evening, I could see past the woods, some half mile down the street, to the lights of the greater metropolitan area beyond. They sparkled in the distance. I knew, of course, what lay in the immediate vicinity in our suburb and our part of the county. I knew also what lay beyond: the big cosmopolitan cities of the east, foremost among them New York, and beyond that, the ocean and Europe. (They danced in my imagination like the magical city of F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise.) I would feel so small and inadequate looking out that window, so unequal to the task of meeting head on what lay out there to the east, my future. I somehow knew or felt in my bones that those big cities out there along the Atlantic coast were the places where futures were regularly made or broken. How did Dickens put it? “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life…” That’s what I wondered as I looked to the east. Would I ever win the riches and glory that I knew could be had out there? Was I up to the task? How was one to begin trying? Would I even know what the real rewards of a life well lived were when I saw them? Looking back, I seemed convinced that these wonderful things lay to the east, but now I wonder if I only felt that way because that happened to be the view on which my windows opened. Would I have invested Canada with the keys to the mystery of my future had my windows faced north?
Through happenstance, I came to live in Washington DC, the capital of the free world, and live there now. I have spent a respectable amount of time in New York, and have successfully conducted business there. I am at an age where in any generation prior to my own, my best years would be said to be behind me. While I know that this magical place where the riches of life can be mine is within me, yet somehow I feel I never made it to that east of my childhood. Maybe that’s because by the time I got to where I thought I wanted to go, I had changed so completely that the me who wanted to go there no longer existed to realize she had arrived. Or maybe the end point keeps moving. Or maybe because that magical place is inside, those things I hoped to achieve there, and the recognition I hoped to gain, are not and cannot be bestowed or claimed in any externally visible or measurable way.
It would be nice to be able to stand over the shoulder of that girl looking out that window and tell her simply to enjoy the journey, that there’s nothing to fear and nothing to “achieve” that she did not already possess. I wonder if she would have done anything differently. I doubt it.
Bedroom, Evening
As the sun would fade from the sky at the end of the day, I would sometimes look out my upstairs bedroom windows to the east. Our street and the several parallel streets adjacent to it ended in a big woods with a deep ravine and stream running through it. Looking out that east window in the evening, I could see past the woods, some half mile down the street, to the lights of the greater metropolitan area beyond. They sparkled in the distance. I knew, of course, what lay in the immediate vicinity in our suburb and our part of the county. I knew also what lay beyond: the big cosmopolitan cities of the east, foremost among them New York, and beyond that, the ocean and Europe. (They danced in my imagination like the magical city of F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise.) I would feel so small and inadequate looking out that window, so unequal to the task of meeting head on what lay out there to the east, my future. I somehow knew or felt in my bones that those big cities out there along the Atlantic coast were the places where futures were regularly made or broken. How did Dickens put it? “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life…” That’s what I wondered as I looked to the east. Would I ever win the riches and glory that I knew could be had out there? Was I up to the task? How was one to begin trying? Would I even know what the real rewards of a life well lived were when I saw them? Looking back, I seemed convinced that these wonderful things lay to the east, but now I wonder if I only felt that way because that happened to be the view on which my windows opened. Would I have invested Canada with the keys to the mystery of my future had my windows faced north?
Through happenstance, I came to live in Washington DC, the capital of the free world, and live there now. I have spent a respectable amount of time in New York, and have successfully conducted business there. I am at an age where in any generation prior to my own, my best years would be said to be behind me. While I know that this magical place where the riches of life can be mine is within me, yet somehow I feel I never made it to that east of my childhood. Maybe that’s because by the time I got to where I thought I wanted to go, I had changed so completely that the me who wanted to go there no longer existed to realize she had arrived. Or maybe the end point keeps moving. Or maybe because that magical place is inside, those things I hoped to achieve there, and the recognition I hoped to gain, are not and cannot be bestowed or claimed in any externally visible or measurable way.
It would be nice to be able to stand over the shoulder of that girl looking out that window and tell her simply to enjoy the journey, that there’s nothing to fear and nothing to “achieve” that she did not already possess. I wonder if she would have done anything differently. I doubt it.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Moving
My office will be moving at the end of next week. Since I began working at this place over 16 years ago, this will be the fifth space we’ve inhabited, and even if I’ve liked the space I’m in, as I do now, I always look forward getting a new work space. It feels like a new beginning, and even though I’ll be doing the same job and working on the same projects, it’s a nice time to say to myself, here is an opportunity to start fresh and approach my work with new resolve. We have already been given the keys to our new offices, and today, a relatively quiet Friday, I began moving some of my stuff to the floor below, into my new office. It’s nice to envision how productive I’ll be in the new space, and how clean and neat I’ll always keep it. I plan on softening the look of my office by adding a textile wall hanging and some trailing plants, like maybe a pothos near the window, which I envision growing with great lush profusion. Even though the new office is smaller and less sunny, I can’t wait for the new chapter in my work life to begin.
It’s a little sad, though, because I will never again spend my days sitting in that other office, where I so often talked to my mother on the phone, and so often talked to the health care providers who took care of her in her final months. Leaving that space means leaving that time, and moving further into the future and away from when I last saw and spent time with her. It makes me recall when I was living in a rented apartment on A Street, and my cat Libby died. Only a week or so later, my refrigerator konked out and could not be fixed, and instead of paying my rent that month, I went out and bought a brand new refrigerator. It was empowering, because my landlord was cheap, and normally obtained his appliances from some shady fellow who “reconditioned” old discarded ones and placed them in his rental units, often complete with a portable infestation of cockroaches. But that month, instead of sending him a rent check, I sent him the receipt for the fridge—and never heard a peep of protest from him. It should have felt great. Instead, it highlighted for me the fact that I could not hold back time, that I would be experiencing that brand new refrigerator without Libby, and thus would be beginning the part of my life that would go on without her.
Maybe it’s weird to compare the loss of my mother to the loss of my cat, but I think you know what I’m getting at. I kind of understand the impulse of those people you hear about who, after the loss of a loved one, never touch a thing in that person’s bedroom again. It doesn’t bring them back, though, and life does go on. What it says to me is that every day we are leaving the past behind and every day we can embrace fresh new beginnings—but perhaps we only really notice it when a goodbye and a hello happen at around the same time.
Even though my new office is smaller, it is configured differently, and is yielding up new places to hang pictures and place small decorative items designed to delight me as I move through my work day. I’ve thought about some of the photos of my mother as a beautiful young woman, and some even older archival items from my grandparents, that are among my mother’s effects, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll frame some of them. They’d look great next to that poster I have, circa 1917, exhorting new Clevelanders to come to the public schools and learn the language of America. Having those images in my office will remind me of who I come from, will make me smile, and will strengthen and nurture me. Even if I will never have spoken to my mother on the phone in my new office, I can bring her with me there, in those photos and in the heart of who I am every day.
It’s a little sad, though, because I will never again spend my days sitting in that other office, where I so often talked to my mother on the phone, and so often talked to the health care providers who took care of her in her final months. Leaving that space means leaving that time, and moving further into the future and away from when I last saw and spent time with her. It makes me recall when I was living in a rented apartment on A Street, and my cat Libby died. Only a week or so later, my refrigerator konked out and could not be fixed, and instead of paying my rent that month, I went out and bought a brand new refrigerator. It was empowering, because my landlord was cheap, and normally obtained his appliances from some shady fellow who “reconditioned” old discarded ones and placed them in his rental units, often complete with a portable infestation of cockroaches. But that month, instead of sending him a rent check, I sent him the receipt for the fridge—and never heard a peep of protest from him. It should have felt great. Instead, it highlighted for me the fact that I could not hold back time, that I would be experiencing that brand new refrigerator without Libby, and thus would be beginning the part of my life that would go on without her.
Maybe it’s weird to compare the loss of my mother to the loss of my cat, but I think you know what I’m getting at. I kind of understand the impulse of those people you hear about who, after the loss of a loved one, never touch a thing in that person’s bedroom again. It doesn’t bring them back, though, and life does go on. What it says to me is that every day we are leaving the past behind and every day we can embrace fresh new beginnings—but perhaps we only really notice it when a goodbye and a hello happen at around the same time.
Even though my new office is smaller, it is configured differently, and is yielding up new places to hang pictures and place small decorative items designed to delight me as I move through my work day. I’ve thought about some of the photos of my mother as a beautiful young woman, and some even older archival items from my grandparents, that are among my mother’s effects, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll frame some of them. They’d look great next to that poster I have, circa 1917, exhorting new Clevelanders to come to the public schools and learn the language of America. Having those images in my office will remind me of who I come from, will make me smile, and will strengthen and nurture me. Even if I will never have spoken to my mother on the phone in my new office, I can bring her with me there, in those photos and in the heart of who I am every day.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Simple Gifts
A friend of my mother’s sent her a CD for Christmas. Lord knows where she got it—it has no production information, no songwriting or performing credits, and is in a simple bifold card stock sleeve with a generic hazy photo of something green and uplifting on the cover. On the Sunday after Christmas, I had spent the entire day with my mother, and was ready to be on my way, but she wanted to listen to her new CD. I looked at it, and it seemed suspiciously “Christian” to me, in the way that is meant by the phrase “contemporary Christian” when used in reference to pop music. We had had a full day, with an outing at the movies and dinner afterwards, but something told me I should stay a bit longer and play it for her. I put it on the CD player and sat next to my mother on the sofa. We just sat and listened, saying nothing, just being together. It was pretty, really pretty, and not sappy. The arrangements for solo piano were simple and the song selections a combination of the familiar and the (to me) unknown. Even Wondrous Love was on it.
Around that time I was very mindful that on some level we were getting close to the end of the road, even though she had not yet taken that final fall, the one that changed everything. I was capable when I wanted to of being in the here and now with her, being present and in the moment even when other obligations and pressures pulled me in a different direction. Nevertheless, that evening I didn’t play the whole album, just five or six tracks. I just couldn’t (or couldn’t allow myself to) sit through the whole thing. I told her I had to get up early the next day for work, which felt a little like a betrayal even if it was true. I asked Mom if I could borrow her new CD to put on my iPod, and she agreed without hesitation. When I left, she walked me to the door, and we agreed that the day had been marvelous. As she thanked me and told me how much she had enjoyed herself, her face glowed with gratitude.
Two days later she took the fall that shattered her elbow and her life. By that time I had already loaded the CD onto my iPod, and I had it with me in the hospital on New Year’s Eve, the day she had her first surgery. I put the earbuds on her as she waited to be taken to the OR and played it for her. Over the ensuing months I played that CD for my mother on many stressful and scary occasions, up until days before she died.
I took the CD with me to Cleveland for the funeral and asked for it to be played as background music during the wake. When I listen to it now, it makes me feel sad, but also takes me to my mother’s sofa on the Sunday after Christmas, as we sat quietly and listened to it together. I am so thankful that I chose to stay and listen to those five or six tracks with her, instead of promising we'd do it the next time I visited. I don’t know whether my mom’s friend had heard it and loved it before she sent it, or saw it on a rack at Marc’s for $1.99 and thought it looked like a nice little something extra to throw into the Christmas card she was sending to her friend Vicki, but it has come to mean a great deal to me. Maybe that’s the best kind of gift. You cast your bread upon the waters, and it may come back to you, but then again someone you don’t know may pick it up off the shore and find it a source of great nourishment.
Around that time I was very mindful that on some level we were getting close to the end of the road, even though she had not yet taken that final fall, the one that changed everything. I was capable when I wanted to of being in the here and now with her, being present and in the moment even when other obligations and pressures pulled me in a different direction. Nevertheless, that evening I didn’t play the whole album, just five or six tracks. I just couldn’t (or couldn’t allow myself to) sit through the whole thing. I told her I had to get up early the next day for work, which felt a little like a betrayal even if it was true. I asked Mom if I could borrow her new CD to put on my iPod, and she agreed without hesitation. When I left, she walked me to the door, and we agreed that the day had been marvelous. As she thanked me and told me how much she had enjoyed herself, her face glowed with gratitude.
Two days later she took the fall that shattered her elbow and her life. By that time I had already loaded the CD onto my iPod, and I had it with me in the hospital on New Year’s Eve, the day she had her first surgery. I put the earbuds on her as she waited to be taken to the OR and played it for her. Over the ensuing months I played that CD for my mother on many stressful and scary occasions, up until days before she died.
I took the CD with me to Cleveland for the funeral and asked for it to be played as background music during the wake. When I listen to it now, it makes me feel sad, but also takes me to my mother’s sofa on the Sunday after Christmas, as we sat quietly and listened to it together. I am so thankful that I chose to stay and listen to those five or six tracks with her, instead of promising we'd do it the next time I visited. I don’t know whether my mom’s friend had heard it and loved it before she sent it, or saw it on a rack at Marc’s for $1.99 and thought it looked like a nice little something extra to throw into the Christmas card she was sending to her friend Vicki, but it has come to mean a great deal to me. Maybe that’s the best kind of gift. You cast your bread upon the waters, and it may come back to you, but then again someone you don’t know may pick it up off the shore and find it a source of great nourishment.
Saturday Morning
I returned to Saturday morning t’ai chi in the park yesterday for the first time in months. All the old familiar faces were there. It felt good to do the form, and it’s the jump start I need to get myself back in the habit of doing the form every morning (it’s one of the many self-caring habits that fell by the wayside in the past six months). I was even able to pretend for a while that nothing in my life had changed since the last time I stood in that lovely green place, slowly shifting my weight and sinking my ch’i into my tan t’ien.
At the end of the session, as I walked across the space toward my car, I saw Jeremy, a distinguished, reserved and very serious gentleman in his early 70s who is one of the t’ai chi regulars, and is an advanced practitioner of other martial arts as well. He’s a retired journalist, and I’ve always felt a little intimidated by him. He greeted me warmly, and as we said hello, we spontaneously took each other’s hand and squeezed. Our greeting was almost affectionate. I’ve known this man for six years, and there is no precedent for such a manifestation of warmth between us-- we've certainly never touched--, yet somehow it felt very natural, and not the least awkward. Perhaps it was the spirit of my mother, who was always far more socially adept and outgoing than I, expressing itself through the medium of her daughter. Or perhaps it was because I felt so aware this morning of how wonderful it is to be able to drive to Northern Virginia on any given Saturday morning, and there they’ll be, an earnest and focused group of people whose only reason for getting up and out that early is to be in touch with their essential life energy in the presence of nature and like-minded others. Whatever it was, Jeremy felt it too. It made my day.
At the end of the session, as I walked across the space toward my car, I saw Jeremy, a distinguished, reserved and very serious gentleman in his early 70s who is one of the t’ai chi regulars, and is an advanced practitioner of other martial arts as well. He’s a retired journalist, and I’ve always felt a little intimidated by him. He greeted me warmly, and as we said hello, we spontaneously took each other’s hand and squeezed. Our greeting was almost affectionate. I’ve known this man for six years, and there is no precedent for such a manifestation of warmth between us-- we've certainly never touched--, yet somehow it felt very natural, and not the least awkward. Perhaps it was the spirit of my mother, who was always far more socially adept and outgoing than I, expressing itself through the medium of her daughter. Or perhaps it was because I felt so aware this morning of how wonderful it is to be able to drive to Northern Virginia on any given Saturday morning, and there they’ll be, an earnest and focused group of people whose only reason for getting up and out that early is to be in touch with their essential life energy in the presence of nature and like-minded others. Whatever it was, Jeremy felt it too. It made my day.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Gift of DTV
I have six rooms in my house, not counting the bathroom. And I shouldn’t admit this, but I have televisions in five of them. It’s not because I love TVs so much. My sweetheart is electronically inclined, and broken TVs that are really not broken rain down on him like water. Three of them have ended up in my house. Consequently, I have the TV on a lot in the evening. It’s always PBS, and it’s usually because I have watched the news during dinner and just kept it on for whatever informative thing is coming on next. I don’t have cable. I think the network offerings are awful, and the only reality show I’ve ever tuned in to, even once, is The Biggest Loser (cringe, but there, I’ve admitted it). But even if it’s The American Experience or Frontline, it is television.
Thanks goodness for the advent of DTV. The big switch is supposed to happen tomorrow, but I’ve had the boxes installed for several months, and spent weeks buying and exchanging antennas afterwards trying to get some sort of reception in my various locations, with any sort of success in only one place in the house. The gift in this is that the signal with DTV is bad, so bad that it’s not really watchable. You can’t just listen and ignore the snow, as you could with analog, because DTV doesn’t work that way. If the signal is weak, the picture freezes and pixillates, and the sound goes off altogether. So when they discontinue the analog signal I may have the TV on less in the evening. I may not have it on at all some evenings, even to watch the news. I might listen to the Newshour on the radio, instead of watching it on TV, since the local NPR affiliate carries it—or I may wean myself of my news addiction altogether. It may evolve that there is only one place in my house that I have TV reception, and if I want to watch something, I have to go there and one-pointedly sit and watch the thing. I may get rid of two or three or four of the televisions. All the things that I envision myself doing during my free time in the evening when I’m not at work and my time is my own—sitting and reading a novel, meditating before bed, taking a walk, doing tai chi-- may actually happen. I may even clean my house, write, or go to bed early enough to get eight hours sleep. What I am most looking forward to is the gift of consciousness, the awareness that I’m alive, that comes with being in silence. It would’ve been nice if I had had the strength of character to do this more often without the help of DTV, but I’ll take it any way I can get it.
Thanks goodness for the advent of DTV. The big switch is supposed to happen tomorrow, but I’ve had the boxes installed for several months, and spent weeks buying and exchanging antennas afterwards trying to get some sort of reception in my various locations, with any sort of success in only one place in the house. The gift in this is that the signal with DTV is bad, so bad that it’s not really watchable. You can’t just listen and ignore the snow, as you could with analog, because DTV doesn’t work that way. If the signal is weak, the picture freezes and pixillates, and the sound goes off altogether. So when they discontinue the analog signal I may have the TV on less in the evening. I may not have it on at all some evenings, even to watch the news. I might listen to the Newshour on the radio, instead of watching it on TV, since the local NPR affiliate carries it—or I may wean myself of my news addiction altogether. It may evolve that there is only one place in my house that I have TV reception, and if I want to watch something, I have to go there and one-pointedly sit and watch the thing. I may get rid of two or three or four of the televisions. All the things that I envision myself doing during my free time in the evening when I’m not at work and my time is my own—sitting and reading a novel, meditating before bed, taking a walk, doing tai chi-- may actually happen. I may even clean my house, write, or go to bed early enough to get eight hours sleep. What I am most looking forward to is the gift of consciousness, the awareness that I’m alive, that comes with being in silence. It would’ve been nice if I had had the strength of character to do this more often without the help of DTV, but I’ll take it any way I can get it.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Seven Morels
There was about a year in my youth when I lived with my sister and her husband in a big tent in the woods in Southern Ohio. Why? Too complicated to explain, really, and I’m not sure I understand it myself. It was a period in my life when I did not know what I wanted to do next and was incapable of moving forward. Looking back on it, I was depressed, certainly. For me, this was only partly an experiment in living off the land, as I had a day job as a licensed practical nurse in town, and my primary contribution to the common weal was financial. Oh, I cooked sometime, I helped keep the site clean, but the real mover and shaker in the whole endeavor was my sister. I was a fifth wheel, a hanger-on, and felt like one when I was in touch with myself enough to feel anything at all. From childhood, I was used to riding in my energetic sister’s wake, but doing so at this point, at the age of 21, wasn’t helping me any, to be sure. I was more than happy to cede the high ground to her in almost everything. She and her husband had aspirations of really making a go of this back-to-the-land thing, and eventually they did buy a piece of property and raise goats.
So this whole thing was kind of a practice run for them, and as if earning scouting badges, we—mostly they—enthusiastically practiced the arts associated with living off the land. We had a Bradford Angier guide to wild edibles, and one day my sister declared with conviction, as she is wont to do, that now was the perfect time of year in which to find morels. In the early 70s, the option to purchase them dried at a gourmet store did not exist. Mushrooming lore had it that they were difficult to find, and those who were skilled or lucky enough to do so guarded their favorite morel tips, tricks and locations as if the little fungi were made of gold.
Off we trekked into the woods. We meandered aimlessly, each of us seeking his or her own path as intuition or happenstance dictated. I wandered about, keeping my eyes to the ground, seeing nothing but dried leaves till before long, I spotted one! Couldn’t believe it, but there it was. What a feeling! I wandered some more, and then spotted another one! Then two more, and before I knew it, I had gathered seven. Each one was growing by itself, so this was seven separate discoveries, seven different gifts from the gods deigning to reveal themselves to me.
I don’t know how long we searched, but we agreed to reconvene at some point, and when we came back together I shared my find. Neither my sister nor her husband found any. I never chopped and stacked our firewood, like my brother-in-law. I never made any life-improving design innovations to our living space, like my sister. If worthiness was measurable by the degree of commitment and contribution we brought to our common life, I was seemingly unworthy. Yet I was the one, the only one, who found the morels, and I found seven of them.
We took them back to our campsite and gently sautéed them in a little butter, then sat there relishing them unadorned, in all their fungal glory. None of us had ever tasted them before. Perhaps my palate was not very well trained, but from a culinary point of view, I couldn’t tell what all the fuss was about. Nevertheless, they were the best mushrooms I have ever tasted.
I had forgotten about them for a long time, but recently have found myself thinking about them quite a bit. They make me feel abundant, proud, loved by God.
So this whole thing was kind of a practice run for them, and as if earning scouting badges, we—mostly they—enthusiastically practiced the arts associated with living off the land. We had a Bradford Angier guide to wild edibles, and one day my sister declared with conviction, as she is wont to do, that now was the perfect time of year in which to find morels. In the early 70s, the option to purchase them dried at a gourmet store did not exist. Mushrooming lore had it that they were difficult to find, and those who were skilled or lucky enough to do so guarded their favorite morel tips, tricks and locations as if the little fungi were made of gold.
Off we trekked into the woods. We meandered aimlessly, each of us seeking his or her own path as intuition or happenstance dictated. I wandered about, keeping my eyes to the ground, seeing nothing but dried leaves till before long, I spotted one! Couldn’t believe it, but there it was. What a feeling! I wandered some more, and then spotted another one! Then two more, and before I knew it, I had gathered seven. Each one was growing by itself, so this was seven separate discoveries, seven different gifts from the gods deigning to reveal themselves to me.
I don’t know how long we searched, but we agreed to reconvene at some point, and when we came back together I shared my find. Neither my sister nor her husband found any. I never chopped and stacked our firewood, like my brother-in-law. I never made any life-improving design innovations to our living space, like my sister. If worthiness was measurable by the degree of commitment and contribution we brought to our common life, I was seemingly unworthy. Yet I was the one, the only one, who found the morels, and I found seven of them.
We took them back to our campsite and gently sautéed them in a little butter, then sat there relishing them unadorned, in all their fungal glory. None of us had ever tasted them before. Perhaps my palate was not very well trained, but from a culinary point of view, I couldn’t tell what all the fuss was about. Nevertheless, they were the best mushrooms I have ever tasted.
I had forgotten about them for a long time, but recently have found myself thinking about them quite a bit. They make me feel abundant, proud, loved by God.
Friday, June 5, 2009
3326
I grew up in a story-and-a-half bungalow built in the mid-50s, and here it is, 3326, in all its majesty. When my parents’ postwar generation moved from the city to the modest inner-ring suburbs like the one I grew up in, it must have seemed like paradise, with its big yards, driveways between the houses, sunny treeless atmosphere, and freely circulating air. I myself moved to a charming but dark circa 1850 house in the city over 10 years ago, and although my current house, because of its location, is worth probably five times what 3326 is, and despite years of boomeresque disdain for the suburbs, I’ve come to appreciate all the fine qualities of my childhood home, and remember keenly what it was like living there.
Its most striking quality is the light. It has windows on all four sides, and its picture window and front door face south. The kitchen, in the back, has north and west light. The window at the top of the stairs and another small window in the living room also face west. My bedroom upstairs faces east. At different times of day, and with different combinations of drapes, curtains and doors open and closed, the house would take on vastly different qualities. To me, 3326 is and was alive, as alive and multifaceted and complex as any person I know. And with its lawn, driveway, backyard, and sky, with its views up the hill and down the street to the woods, that little piece of paradise in Parma, Ohio is as full of meaning to me as John Ford’s Monument Valley, or the National Mall in Washington DC.
What the Light Would Do, Part I
Early Morning, Kitchen
Sometimes you’d wake up before anyone else. The first place you’d go in that house, always, would be the kitchen. There, the first thing you’d do is open the café curtains, especially the ones on the window facing the back yard, to the north. On a quiet morning, with no one else up, no lights on and nothing stirring, the kitchen would be suffused with a soft, almost bluish light—especially if it was winter and the back yard was covered with a thick layer of pristine snow. Light from the living room, so powerful most of the time, would not be a factor, because the drapes and door would still be closed. The pale gentle majesty of the morning kitchen reigned. You might go to the side door and get the paper, but if so, you’d do it quietly, because this interregnum between night and day would not last long, and you wanted to relish the feeling of knowing a world of possibilities was before you, and you were the first one to be there for whatever was going to happen. For now, you’d leave the overhead light off, because the cool north light was the house, being itself, the way it was when it knew none of its inhabitants were around. In fact, you had the feeling it had been awake for a while, waiting for you.
You’d take the seat you knew you wanted at the kitchen table. Gradually, the rest of the family and the world would wake up around you, and things would be turned on, pastry would be broken out or eggs scrambled, coffee would be made, orange juice poured, and sections of the paper traded. The coolness and quietude would fade as the kitchen filled with people and the day progressed, but for a while the still, pregnant and eternal magic of the morning kitchen would stay with you, and you’d cherish it.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
On Singing the Mozart Requiem
I’ve been a member of my church choir for fifteen years. I joined almost immediately upon joining the church. I had a lot of lost singing time to make up, since I had not attended any church at all for the previous 27 years, and had not sung in a choir since high school. This week, my beloved choir director said his goodbyes for greater vocational challenges elsewhere. It’s been difficult to see him go, so soon after that other more permanent goodbye. We sang a choral Evensong last Sunday, and it’s caused me to remember the moment when I stopped fearing death.
We used to have an annual concert in which we performed a major work from the choral repertoire. Generally, I’ve always liked to stand front and center when we sing, because I love watching Keith, my director, and want to be where the action is. During concerts, though, he would generally tell us where he wanted us to be, and the year we sang the Mozart Requiem I was standing only one person removed from the columbarium.
It was the afternoon prior to the concert, and we were rehearsing. Most of the lights in the nave were off, but there was light coming through the stained glass windows, and there was some activity out there in the nave while we rehearsed, as people prepared the seating and post-concert reception area. I don’t remember which movement we were rehearsing, but I began to feel the presence of the columbarium near me, pulling my attention to it as Keith worked with the choir and the bustle of life continued around me. It came into my consciousness that yes, those were the remains of dead people right over there next to me, people who had once been alive and moving around this space, talking and laughing and singing, just as we were doing now, maybe even gossiping or bitching about each other, activities that too enjoy much current popularity.
I realized I was singing for them, because they had no voice, and what I was singing was written centuries ago by someone who was also dead and had no voice, written expressly for singing by us, the living, for them, the dead. And I knew in that moment that some day, I’d be dead and this piece would be sung again, for me, because I would have no voice, by people who might not yet live, but whether they knew it or not, or knew of my existence on this earth, they’d be singing it for me. At that moment the dividing line between life and death fell away, the past and the future and indeed time itself fell away, and there was no difference between me and the people whose remains were in the columbarium. At that moment, there was nothing at all left to fear in life or death.
I retained that feeling through the concert later that afternoon. I can call it up when I need and want to, though I’m sorry to report that it did not make me always and forever fearless—I’m still working on that. The music these past fifteen years has been a priceless gift, but that epiphany is probably the one I was seeking when I first stumbled into St. Mark’s.
We used to have an annual concert in which we performed a major work from the choral repertoire. Generally, I’ve always liked to stand front and center when we sing, because I love watching Keith, my director, and want to be where the action is. During concerts, though, he would generally tell us where he wanted us to be, and the year we sang the Mozart Requiem I was standing only one person removed from the columbarium.
It was the afternoon prior to the concert, and we were rehearsing. Most of the lights in the nave were off, but there was light coming through the stained glass windows, and there was some activity out there in the nave while we rehearsed, as people prepared the seating and post-concert reception area. I don’t remember which movement we were rehearsing, but I began to feel the presence of the columbarium near me, pulling my attention to it as Keith worked with the choir and the bustle of life continued around me. It came into my consciousness that yes, those were the remains of dead people right over there next to me, people who had once been alive and moving around this space, talking and laughing and singing, just as we were doing now, maybe even gossiping or bitching about each other, activities that too enjoy much current popularity.
I realized I was singing for them, because they had no voice, and what I was singing was written centuries ago by someone who was also dead and had no voice, written expressly for singing by us, the living, for them, the dead. And I knew in that moment that some day, I’d be dead and this piece would be sung again, for me, because I would have no voice, by people who might not yet live, but whether they knew it or not, or knew of my existence on this earth, they’d be singing it for me. At that moment the dividing line between life and death fell away, the past and the future and indeed time itself fell away, and there was no difference between me and the people whose remains were in the columbarium. At that moment, there was nothing at all left to fear in life or death.
I retained that feeling through the concert later that afternoon. I can call it up when I need and want to, though I’m sorry to report that it did not make me always and forever fearless—I’m still working on that. The music these past fifteen years has been a priceless gift, but that epiphany is probably the one I was seeking when I first stumbled into St. Mark’s.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
"Hi, Cher, this is Mom."
In 2003, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was still living in Parma at the time, at 3326, the house I grew up in. I was on the phone with her daily, and visited when she needed me to help her through some medical challenge. But I didn’t live in the same city, and there was so much I couldn’t do from DC. I sent her a letter telling her how courageous I thought she was and how much I admired her, and I received a voice mail message in return. I could tell by her tone of voice how moved she had been by my letter, as she thanked me and told me how much it meant to her. Since she was not one who easily expressed tender feelings, I just couldn’t bring myself to erase it. And since I didn’t know whether she’d come through the cancer okay, I began to save other messages from her.
“Hi, Cher, this is Mom,” most of them began, and they went on to wish me happy birthday and happy Easter, to warn me not to drive to Cleveland to visit her during a predicted snowstorm, to tell me about something I’d enjoy on TV, to tell me she was being taken to the emergency room, to tell me how happy she was that she remembered my sister’s birthday. I didn’t save every message from her, but over the years they added up, and if I got a message from someone else, I’d have to hurry to press the delete button fast enough so that I wouldn’t have to scroll through all those messages from Ma, yet again, to erase the non-mom message.
Some time this spring, my answering machine had begun to tell me in its robo-voice that I had only four minutes of recording time left. I had begun to worry that I’d run out of recording room. I knew I’d have to do something about those messages from Ma, but she was so sick, and I just couldn’t think about it right now.
Well, you know what happened next. This past April 9th, my mother died (of causes unrelated to the breast cancer, which she weathered well, by the way). Those messages are still on that phone. With only four minutes recording time left, I know I have to get them off of there and onto a more permanent medium, and I will, once I finish sorting through boxes and estate-related papers. I’ve saved e-mails from her as well, and I have lots of things she wrote to me over the years, but nothing substitutes for her voice telling me how much she loved me, time and again. I plan to listen to those messages on my birthday, on Easter, during snowstorms and any time I need to. I found a place that can transfer them to a CD, as separate tracks, so I can listen to any one I want at any time. I probably won’t do it for a long time, but it’ll be nice to know I can.
“Hi, Cher, this is Mom,” most of them began, and they went on to wish me happy birthday and happy Easter, to warn me not to drive to Cleveland to visit her during a predicted snowstorm, to tell me about something I’d enjoy on TV, to tell me she was being taken to the emergency room, to tell me how happy she was that she remembered my sister’s birthday. I didn’t save every message from her, but over the years they added up, and if I got a message from someone else, I’d have to hurry to press the delete button fast enough so that I wouldn’t have to scroll through all those messages from Ma, yet again, to erase the non-mom message.
Some time this spring, my answering machine had begun to tell me in its robo-voice that I had only four minutes of recording time left. I had begun to worry that I’d run out of recording room. I knew I’d have to do something about those messages from Ma, but she was so sick, and I just couldn’t think about it right now.
Well, you know what happened next. This past April 9th, my mother died (of causes unrelated to the breast cancer, which she weathered well, by the way). Those messages are still on that phone. With only four minutes recording time left, I know I have to get them off of there and onto a more permanent medium, and I will, once I finish sorting through boxes and estate-related papers. I’ve saved e-mails from her as well, and I have lots of things she wrote to me over the years, but nothing substitutes for her voice telling me how much she loved me, time and again. I plan to listen to those messages on my birthday, on Easter, during snowstorms and any time I need to. I found a place that can transfer them to a CD, as separate tracks, so I can listen to any one I want at any time. I probably won’t do it for a long time, but it’ll be nice to know I can.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
On Being Awake and Aware
If you know me, you probably know that my mother recently died. I've felt compelled to write about it, and in the process I've gotten back in touch with that long-dormant suspicion that I might have something to say that others might be interested in reading. And as I think and write about my mother, I am finding that she's all mixed up with lots of memories I have of life lived with her and without her, with other people I've loved and places I've been. Thornton Wilder had Emily Gibbs say this about it:
"....It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back-- up the hill-- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners, Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking, and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths, and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?-- every, every minute?"
I'm not saying good-bye, but since my mother so recently has, the necessity to realize life while I live it, every, every minute, seems clear. To Emily's question, the Stage Manager replied, "Saints and poets, maybe..." I'm no saint or poet, but nevertheless, here goes.
"....It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back-- up the hill-- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners, Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking, and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths, and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?-- every, every minute?"
I'm not saying good-bye, but since my mother so recently has, the necessity to realize life while I live it, every, every minute, seems clear. To Emily's question, the Stage Manager replied, "Saints and poets, maybe..." I'm no saint or poet, but nevertheless, here goes.
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