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.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
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.
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