The Same Thing Happens Every Time

I’ve been having a recurring nightmare lately. In it, I am 77 years old, barely mobile, half-blind…and I am still dragging Dave’s mother around everywhere I go. It could happen; some people live to be 98 years old, and if anyone will, Mother will.
I wish you could meet Dave’s mother. She really needs to be experienced, she cannot be described. Having said that, I am going to try to describe her. She is short, scrawny, with bird-like legs, salt and pepper hair that is still mostly pepper, and glasses that magnify her eyes so that she looks like an owl. She stares and blinks like an owl as well. She likes clothes that are too big for her, and tends to wear shorts most of the time, so she looks like a cartoon character with her stick legs dangling out of shorts that three of her could wear at one time. She walks bent over, elbows working, taking four steps to my one- and I slow down for her, so my one step is very leisurely- but she can never keep up, so I slow down even further… and when I come to a complete stop, I realize that she has zigged with uncanny speed either to the left or right, and is gone.
Which brings me to this segment of “The Same Thing Happens Every Time.”
Examples:
Dave and I take her to Lowe’s because she says she wants to come. We don’t have much shopping to do, but even so, when we get there, she decides to stay in the car. Not up to all that walking. We dash in, dash out, gone 15 minutes tops, get back to the car… and of course, she is gone. 30 minutes later, we find her. She went for a walk.

We head out to visit our son and his family. Mother wants to come with us. We travel to Manchester, spend a little time, eat a little dinner… and notice Mother is gone. Where is she? Sitting in the car. No pressure to go home, huh?

She likes to go out to eat. She won’t tell me where she wants to go or what she wants to eat, and is usually disappointed with whatever choice I make. When we get to the restaurant, she refuses to order anything to drink, heads straight for the bathroom, and comes back expecting me to have ordered for her. When the waitress asks what she wants to eat, she stares and blinks. When she finally speaks, 7 times out of 10 she uses what I lovingly call her “stroke” voice - swollen tongued, halting, over-exaggerated pronunciations- which is so patently phony that waitresses have been known to laugh out loud. I’ll tell you about her phony faint some other time, but will mention here that it is hilarious.
Anyway, back to the same thing happens every time… she orders her meal and the minute the food comes, she asks for a doggie bag. She eats about six mouthfuls and is “full”. I have learned to inhale my food rather than eat with her sitting with her doggie bag on her lap, blinking at me. The waitress offers her something to drink several times during the meal, but she doesn’t ask for anything until the bill comes. We wait for the drink, wait for the bill to be re-tabulated… and she leaves without drinking the drink and forgets her doggie bag. (Which is just as well, because when she remembers to bring it home, it just rots in the fridge- she doesn’t like left-overs.)

She’s always spoken with a barely comprehensible Polish-American accent but as she has aged- and survived a couple of mild strokes- her speech has become more disjointed and harder to follow. I am her interpreter because I understand what she is saying, though there are times when I misinterpret her deliberately. Well, unless she walks up to 600 pound men at Tractor Supply, and says things like “Oh, you are so fat!” It’s kind of hard to misinterpret that. I just follow her around and mouth “stroke victim” to whomever she is currently talking to.

Mother loves talking to strangers. She loves inflicting her personality on people. She has been calling herself an “old lady” since she became a grandmother at 41; now she tells anyone who will listen that she is 77 years old as if expecting them to say “NO! Surely not! That’s older than the world!” and is always disappointed when they don’t. She tells perfect strangers that she is homeless (she's not -she lives with Dave and I and has a whole wing of the house to herself); she tells them that we don’t feed her (we do), or that we make her stay in her room all the time (we don't); and, my personal favorite, that she has no one to care for her. As you may have surmised, Mother is not the most truthful person on the planet. She will tell her tale of woe to someone one day, and Social Services will show up the next. Thank God we live in a small town where people know us- and Mother.

Whenever Mother is bored- which, sadly, is most of the time because she won’t do anything for herself anymore- she tends to make long, prolonged, and very irritating sounds. Barking like a dog. Cackling like a hen. Repeating a phrase over and over, LOUDLY! If we are watching something on TV she doesn’t want to watch, she sings. LOUDLY! If that doesn’t work, she interacts with the cat. LOUDLY! (By the way, she has decided my cat Patches is a dog, because she doesn’t like cats, but she does like Patches, so Patches must be a dog.)

There are other little things. My housekeeper Stephanie is also her caretaker when I am away, and is as good and gentle and sweet with her as one human being can be with another. Mother calls her Sadie. She calls her Sadie because my last housekeeper was named Sadie. Apparently Mother thinks all housekeepers are named Sadie. The only problem with this premise is that my last housekeeper was named Sandy, not Sadie.

Don’t get me wrong. Mother can be and is cute, she can be sweet, and she is incredibly generous. When I was sick with the flu, she took care of me the best she could and I appreciated it. She is willing to scratch my back, an admirable quality in any person. It’s not that she doesn’t have an upside. There are lots of times when we crack each other up and for the most part, we live and work well together. I love her. I even like her.

It’s just that I keep having this recurring nightmare.

All it takes to be happy is a fully furnished Victorian home

Unlike my dear husband, I did not have a happy childhood. My family was large, chaotic, and dysfunctional; there was altogether too much alcohol, violence and neglect and too little nurturing and calm. Add chronic health problems and a well-founded sense of being unloved to the mix, and happiness just doesn’t fit. I have spent a disproportionate part of my adult life overcoming the effects of my childhood, but now, in my middle fifties, I believe I have found the solution.

I have a glitzy little thing-a-ma-bob dangling from one of the lamps in my living room that reads “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” So, with Dave’s help, I have been giving myself one. Naturally, this process involves toys. Lots of toys. And, in my case, lots and lots of little tiny perfect toys. Miniatures. Yes, yes, I am providing my second childhood with its own house… a “dollhouse”. I have converted a lovely five shelf curio cabinet into a vignette display case for all the dollhouse furniture I have coveted my whole life.

The top shelf is the master bedroom and the bath. The master bedroom is in mahogany, as is most of the wood in the “house”. The bed has real sheets and pillowcases and a satin brocade comforter and throw pillows. There are two nightstands, a dressing table, an armoire, floral carpets on the floor… When complete, Barbara the nanny will be reading to the baby in its crib in the bedroom, while Peter, the eldest son, dries off after his bath in the sumptuous bathroom, complete with blue floral carpet and filled linen case. (Peter is here. Barbara and the baby are here, but we are waiting for the crib and the rocking chair, so they are sitting together uncomfortably on the brocade bench. I sometimes I think I see Barbara tapping her dainty foot impatiently. In fact, I fear Barbara may be a problem if not watched- she’s much prettier than a nanny has a right to be, and the man of the house is sure to notice that.)

The second shelf is the nursery floor. Peter’s bedroom, and that of his two sisters, are here. Peter’s room is rather spartan, as the rooms of Victorian era boys usually were, but he does have a comfy trundle bed, a dresser and a table and chair- and will soon have a shadow box butterfly collection to hang on his wall, being, as he is, a young naturalist. His sisters’ room is furnished in white and pink, of course. Mama, when she gets here, will be sitting on a chair, cuddling younger sister Beth while big sister Christy (who is here, being a timely child) sits on her bed reading a miniature copy of “A Child’s Garden of Verses”- one of my childhood favs, of course.

Mama has come to say good night because she has a houseful of people in the (third shelf) parlor. It is a well-appointed Victorian room, with rich carpets on the floor. Many of the pictures on the wall are miniature replicas of pictures I have chosen for my own home, most of which are works by James Jacques Tissot. The parlor boasts two conversation areas and a music room. In the small corner conversation area, Alice, who is shy, is sitting listening to Eric, who is also shy and has yet to put down his hat. In the main part of the room, Mr. Michael O’Toole has captured the rapt attention of Katherine, (Eric’s older sister), Rhett (the man of the house), and George (Katherine’s husband, who is enjoying a pre-dinner drink). Marcia (when she gets here) will admire the grand piano, which she will play for the assembled guests later in the evening.

In the (fourth shelf) dining room, Hazel the maid is waiting to put the finishing touches on the table. This is pretty tough right now, because the china hasn’t come yet, so dinner will be delayed until it gets here. It’s coming from England, so it may take some time. But there is a fire in the handsome fireplace that makes all the beautiful serving dishes in the hutch gleam, a beautiful oriental carpet on the floor, and a Japanese screen that separates the dining room from the library, to which the men will repair after dinner for cigars, brandy and a game of chess.

The (fifth shelf) kitchen is a beehive of activity as Ruth the cook, with Susan the ladies’ maid’s help, prepares the evening feast. I am having a ball outfitting this kitchen. I have a porcelain sink, an icebox, and an AGA stove (okay, AGA stoves are NOT Victorian, but I have been in love with them since my trip to England, and this was the only way I was ever going to get one). I have two kitchen dressers, and a pantry on the way. To the right of the kitchen is the truck garden, already “planted” with lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower and strawberry beds, and with a green man overlooking it all.
I am having SO MUCH FUN!

BUT… I am forcing myself to STOP buying anything more until after Christmas. I am giving everyone who has been complaining that I am impossible to buy for a Miniatures.com catalog with everything I want in it circled. I have purchased a lot of my stuff from Miniatures.com (http://www.miniatures.com/) and can recommend the site highly. Another site I use a great deal is the Dollhouse Emporium (http://www.dollshouse.com/) and it is also a wonderful source of yummy goodies.

My “people” are actually figurines, since I am creating vignettes rather than playing with them, but they bring a wonderful dimension to the scenes. Katherine is leaning in to hear Mr. O’Toole. Alice is glancing sideways at Eric. They are wonderful and, while not poseable, are much more realistic than even the priciest porcelain miniature dolls I have looked at.

If I can ever figure out how to post pictures to my blog, I will post pictures if you are interested. In the meantime, I am really am enjoying my second childhood.

It's true... you really CAN find everything on the internet

When I was a kid, my mom was a prodigious cookie maker.  She was a superb cook in all areas- well, okay, she made undrinkable coffee, but that was her only failing- and a remarkably versatile baker.  One of her favorite cookie recipes was that for By Cracky Bars.  She made them from time to time and the taste and smell of them particularly lingers in my memory.  She got the recipe from a publication of the Pillsbury Cook-Off entries, a slim, paperback 5X7 little book that bore the stains of frequent use.  

When my mom died, my sister inherited most of her effects.  This was entirely fair, since she had been Mama’s primary caregiver throughout the long illness that finally took her.  Among those effects was that little cookbook.

For the past couple of years, I have been obsessing about By Cracky Bars.  Even though I am diabetic and can’t eat them, I want to make them, to see and smell them again, and to feed them to my granddaughters to see if any of them love the cookie as much as I did as a child.  I asked my sister for the recipe- but after 15 years, and a couple of moves, she could not find the cookbook.  

Sigh.

And then I thought, what the hell?  I googled “By Cracky Bars” and up popped a partial recipe.  All the ingredients were there, but oven temperature and baking time were not.  What WAS there, however, was the source for the recipe.  The 1953 Pillsbury Bake Off Cookbook.  A title. A year.  A miracle.

So I immediately scurried to the online Barnes and Noble,  www.bn.com straight to the out of print book tab, and typed in 1953 Pillsbury Bake Off.  Voila!  There it was in all its glory- actually several copies were listed- and so it is now wending its way to my kitchen.  I will be so happy to have it, not just because I will get to taste By Cracky Bars for the first time in 40 years, but because I will have a little “memorabilia” of my mother’s days as a baker.   I wonder if her recipe for prune coffee cake is in there?

The collector

Eons and eons ago, when the world was still new, and virgins still lived on it, I had a unicorn. Actually, I had two; actually, I still have them. My sister-in-law Rita gave them to me, two beautiful cream porcelain unicorns. They sat on the piano for years. Then my daughter began the tradition of giving me a unicorn every Christmas. This tradition began in 1987, so you do the math. Unicorns are neither mythical or extinct- they have been transfigured into porcelain and ceramic and stone and glass, and they eventually end up here where they belong.

I guess those unicorns started my career as a collector. That, and the kindness of family and friends. A few years later my godson Ian started the tradition of giving me angels. I now have a shelf of angels in the same curio that contains my unicorns. My sister gave me our grandmother's teapot. Even though I don't like tea, I do like teapots, and before I knew it, my hubby and other lovely people deluged me with teapots.

I love anything miniature and so have a small collection of miniature furniture and a moderate collection of miniature tea sets. (Again with the tea! Have I mentioned I don't like tea?) I have a small collection of Boyd's little Victorian girls, simply because they charmed me. I have a collection of mannekins in my bathroom, and a collection of pitchers in the kitchen. I love PICTURES as well, and the walls of our house are graced with many beautiful works of art. We may have to move; I am running out of wall space.

My largest collection by far, however, is my faery collection. I have loved faeries since childhood, and for the longest time it was really hard to find them. I carried one faery all the way from England because he was, and is, so uniquely beautiful and so rare. Until fairly recently, it was a real coup to find two or three faeries a year. However, in the past few years they have become easier to find, and now friends and family are been buying them for me, too. Right now, as I look at a 16-foot expanse of bookcases in my living room, I can tell you that the top of it is completely inhabited by faeries. Faeries peek out of my plants, and dangle from my lamps. I have "hidden" at least one faery in every room of my house (except Dave's bathroom- he draws the line at faeries watching him bathe). There are faeries in the bedroom, the guest room, the kitchen, the dining room and they all bring me great joy.

My granddaughters were collectors for a little while. Kendall collected Boyd’s bears. She’s now, at 10, too old for them. Haley collected angels. She now disdains to collect anything so “girly girl”. Delaney collects faeries. She sometimes collects MY faeries. She is the only granddaughter still interested in her collection, and it touches me that she chose to collect something so dear to my own heart. (I have a four piece collection of granddaughters, by the way- but Emily is too little to collect anything except hugs just yet.)

I love all my collections, but the two that really obsess me are faeries and pictures. And pictures of faeries, for that matter. I have “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Edward Robert Hughes hanging on the wall opposite me as I type this. And a watercolor of Fairy Land my mother painted when I was 5 or 6 hangs above the bookcases in the living room, an integral part of the faery population there. My best bud Marcia gave me a plaque with dancing faeries that reads “groweth young” and every time I look at my beloved faeries, I do.

Top Ten Really Obnoxious Things... in my opinion

I have spent the morning trying to get an obnoxious fly out of my PT Cruiser. I was doing this while I was running errands, and believe me, it was no fun negotiating the never-ending road construction, heavy traffic, and a pain-in-the-ass bug. I finally succeeded in shooing it out, but the battle got me to thinking about life’s little annoyances. Here are the top ten things I find most obnoxious, in no particular order.

1. A flying insect in the car. Any insect. Any car.

2. People who chew with their mouths open. Chomp, smack, slurp, YUCK.

3. Servers and/or clerks who seem to feel it is beneath their dignity to provide me with service… or courtesy, for that matter. Just TRY to get politely served in this service economy, I defy you.

4. Telemarketers. “Sign up for the don’t call list”, my ass. Thank God for caller ID; at least if you don’t recognize the name or number, you can refuse to answer the phone. Unless you are my husband, who seems to be pathologically incapable of letting a ringing phone go unanswered.

5. Obscene e-mails. This one really pisses me off. Can’t our service providers figure out a way to protect us from these things? I mean, look for the “F” word or something? It seems for every sender I block, three more show up with the exact same message, and frankly, I have never had much interest in “hot, young babes”. Call me weird, but there it is; I’m just not into naked women.

6. Junk snail mail. Why does it cost me 37¢ to mail a one-ounce letter when publishers can ship whole catalogs for the same price? Unsolicited catalogs, I might add, which I must then responsibly recycle or I am the one polluting the planet. PUH-LEEZE!

7. Companies that sell my information to other companies as part of their “Mailing List”. Which is why I get so many unsolicited catalogs. How did the information I provided to them become their property? And if they are going to sell my information, shouldn’t I get part of the profits? At least enough to cover the cost of recycling their crap?

8. Loud bass lines: I like music. I even like loud music. And I like a good bass line- I give it a ten, I can dance to it. However, I do not like it when I am in my pool, 250 feet from the road, and the bass line thumping from an adolescent boy’s car makes waves in the water. Or rattles my bric-a-brac in the house. Call me eccentric, but this annoys me.

9. Badly behaved and/or sassy kids: I have a hard time biting my tongue- and restraining my “swatting” hand- whenever I am subjected to the antics of a brat. All kids misbehave once in awhile, and have their bratty moments; I’m talking about a pattern of unacceptable behavior in a child that goes uncorrected by a responsible adult. I do not appreciate being talked to by a 5 year old like we are peers, or bossed or lectured by someone’s “precocious” little angel. Brats uncorrected do not make pleasant adults. But at least I can tell off an adult without its mother busting my chops. I can think of about a half a dozen brats I know right now that I will enjoy talking to once they are grown. As for now, they just need to be elsewhere.

10. Call waiting. I hate call waiting. I have never subscribed to that service and resent people who do. Why would anyone give people permission to interrupt their phone calls? Don’t they have answering machines? Can’t people call back? When I am talking to someone and they put me on hold to take another call in the midst of our conversation, I hang up on them. Obviously our conversation was not compelling enough to keep them engaged in it, and my time has value. A phone call is an unexpected interruption to begin with- you stop what you are doing to answer the phone. To have an interruption interrupted is just too much.

I’m sure I will think of more obnoxious things in the future. Any of these hit home with you?

Grumping my way to the pool. See ya.

Feeling pretty good, thanks...

I got my very first French manicure today and am ever so pleased with myself.  It’s the little things in life that keep you happy, you know?  The older I get, the more able I am to take great pleasure in little things.  A dip in the pool makes my day.  Watching the birds from the kitchen window delights me.  Curling up with a good book, watching a cloud mass blow by, listening to bird song… it’s like being a child again.

By my estimation, I am going through my second childhood for the fourth time.  I have become a child again with each grandchild.  Though I must admit that it’s not as easy with Miss Emily as it has been with Kendall, Haley and Delaney, it is still wonderful to have a baby in the house again.  She may not be as gentle and loving as the other three, but she certainly is adorable and entertaining.  So bright, so mischievous, and what a mugger!  She cracks me up constantly.  She’s at that age where she likes to do the same thing over and over and over and over, a stage that wore me out when I was a mama but tickles me as a grandma… or NeeNee,  as my four wonderful girls call me.  Miss Emily called me that for the first time yesterday- so you know she has me wrapped around her chubby little finger.

My little girls spent last weekend swimming in my pool.  It is so much fun to watch them.  They are like otters, swift and silly.  It’s also fun to join them.  I may be almost 56 and more than a little plump, but in the pool, I am sleek and youthful and can somersault with the best of them.  The pool has provided us with a medium where we can meet on equal footing.  We are all water babies and kindred spirits in the pool.

Life is treating me well right now.  My children are doing well, my grandchildren are thriving, my body has been giving me a respite from the stiffness and pain I have been dealing with for the past year, and even my sugar is leveling off.  My “blues” have lessened, and my energy has increased.  In fact, I am feeling almost like a kid again.  Yesterday, it suddenly hit me how good I am feeling, and I stood in front of the mirror and shook my tail feathers. I had to laugh at myself.   I am the grayest, fattest, goofiest kid I know.

Making a big splash

Sometime in April, my daughter-in-law Becca came up with the idea of throwing a surprise birthday party for my son Jake on the occasion of his 29th birthday, figuring he would be expecting something for his big 3-0, which, of course, he would. She thought a luau would be fun. Thus began the months of planning that culminated in a genuinely surprised Jake last Saturday- two days in advance of his actual birthday.

The short planning stage segued into the first of several trips to party stores. We bought grass skirts and leis and garlands and bracelet leis. We bought Hawaiian shirts for the guys. We bought tiki heads, and a tiki pinata. We bought luau themed napkins, cups, plates, bowls, platters, and even a grass skirt for the table. We had inflatable palm trees and inflatable monkeys. We bought three tiki torches. We had inflatable coolers for beer and soft drinks. My best bud Marcia stored all this in her home office for us, but the shopping that continued sporadically ended up under my bed. My side was soon taller than Dave's.

Speaking of Dave- my beloved husband took a week's vacation to get the front yard and the pool area looking good for the party. He re-stained the patio set, and cleaned out gardens, and hung hanging baskets; he moved storage lockers, and mowed and weed-eated, all in 95+ heat. What a mensch.

Becca and I made the invitations and got them mailed. We experimented with cakes... five different cakes...I am thoroughly sick of cake, by the way... and finally managed one that looked like a hula dancer, coconut bra and all, and one that passed for a volcano.

Saturday morning, Becca came over with her sister Abigail and my pixie granddaughter Delaney and we cleaned off the front porch and decorated the back yard. We floated an inflatable lobster in the pool, and after several hours in sweltering heat beneath the threat of rain, we all joined it in the pool to cool off.

We'd recruited a friend in the neighborhood to let people park at his house so it would look like HE was having a party. At six o'clock, guests began to arrive. At about 6:30, Jake, Becca and the four girls arrived, hard on the heels of the Prossers, who got here a little late. We manuevered Jake through the house and into the back yard through the closed curtain. Everyone yelled "SURPRISE" and Jake was genuinely surprised!

It was a great party. There were 26 people here, about half of which Jake eventually chucked into the pool; he got chucked in himself several times. With the music of steel drums in the background, we chowed down on hamburgers, hot dogs, barbecued beans and all the acoutrements that go with them. The cakes were a hit. The girls donned their hula skirts and danced for their daddy, and THEY were a hit. About 10:30, we were driven indoors by the mosquitos, but until then, the party was a smash. Everyone helped drag in the food and drink and Jake's numerous gifts, one of which was a scrapbook album of his life that I have been working on for months. I'm proud of it, and think it is a work of art as well as an act of love.

We were all exhausted the next day. Poor, tired Dave left for San Diego. Mama and I went to church and then met Jake and his brood at the Cracker Barrel in Manchester where we had lunch together, and where Mama purchased white rockers for the front porch for mine and Dave's 37th anniversary (August 10). Jake loaded them into his truck and we got the porch set up so pretty... and then we all (except Mama) jumped in the pool. Baby Emily hung out with me in the shallow end while everyone else competed to see who could make the biggest splash. Poor Delaney was at a disadvantage being so little, but Haley and Kendall made decent waves which washed up to Emily and I, to our mutual delight. Becca and Jake made tidal waves, and the baby and I REALLY loved those.

As refreshing and relaxing as the swim was, it was the icing on the exhaustion cake. Damn, we're back to cake again. After the Lapczynski Traveling Circus left for Manchester (Jake as ringmaster, Becca as band leader, Delaney the high flying trapeze artist, Haley the clown, Kendall the lady on horseback and Emily the lion tamer), Mama and I collapsed on the couch. We vegged amid the detritus of a pretty spectacular birthday for the rest of the day, too tired to clean, tidy or generally move.

It was worth it. Jake has been feeling pretty under-appreciated lately. I think he's over it now.

Another good-bye

I lost my baby brother to cancer in April. Maybe that is part of the reason I have been so attuned to other deaths from cancer lately. Last night, it was announced that Peter Jennings had died, at 67, of lung cancer. He was a heavy smoker for most of his life, as had been my brother and my mother. As an ex-smoker myself, I cannot take the cynical attitude of a lot of non-smokers that these deaths were a form of suicide- the intent was never to die, to heaven's sake; it was to be calmer, or to suppress the appetite, or to seem mature. And the addiction is invidious and entrapping, as anyone who has ever tried to break the habit can attest. I quit smoking six years ago after numerous failed attempts, and - sorry, Tom Cruise- I used a drug to finally do it (Zyban). I think I saved my own life, but not my health. After 24 years of smoking, I have decreased lung capacity and traces of emphysema. Nothing critical, thank God, but enough to let me know how damaging that addiction has been, and no guarantee that it won't lead to cancer in my future despite the past six years of non-smoking.

I met Peter Jennings when I was in high school. I attended a journalism workshop at Ohio University and he was the guest speaker. David Brinkley, a hero of mine, was supposed to be the speaker, but the program was changed at the last minute, and frankly, many of us were deeply disappointed... until he started to speak. Okay, to be honest, until we got a good look at him. He was drop dead gorgeous, much prettier than David Brinkley, and, at 16, that made him romantic in my eyes. He instantly had our attention and he spoke to us like we were informed adults, and spoke to our better angels. He was inspiring. After his talk, he met with many of us- all the teenage girls who were hoping to be noticed and some of the boys who were serious about journalism and me, who was both. He was very kind. He patiently answered our questions, and asked us our names, which he remembered to use in his replies. He shook my hand and wished me well in my career; at that time, I was convinced I was going to work for UPI. I didn't, of course, but it meant a lot to me, a young girl in the 60's, that Peter Jennings seemed to think it was perfectly logical and natural that I would. He was a lovely man.

I realize now that it must have been early in his career when he spoke to us, since I met him almost 40 years ago. He was no more than 27 at the time. I followed his career the rest of his life, and felt he was the kind of journalist I would have liked to have been; eloquent, curious, informed and informative. And beautiful all the way into his 60's.

I will miss his presence on the television. I hate that cancer killed him. I hate that smoking caused the cancer.

Ah, sloth and lethargy...

On Sunday, I took yet another step in my transformation from productive member of society to kept woman- I resigned my position as Director of Christian Education at my church. I have held the position for five years, and it has been a labor of love for me. But the chronic travel and my unraveling health made me realize that I am not doing justice to the job, so I tendered my resignation.

Little (and big) pieces of my life have been peeling away this year and I have been busy trying to redefine myself. I have one title left: President of the GFWC Centennial Woman's Club of Tullahoma, and we are gearing up for the start of our year of service. This is the last year of my two-year term as president, but I am also the state chairman for the Endowment Fund, and Education chair for District IV of Tennessee. I find my life as a clubwoman very fulfilling and fun.

But I am also finding my life as a "retired" person fun, too. I see my grandkids a lot more. I can sleep whenever or wherever I want. I can wallow in scrapbooking and sewing and writing and painting and any number of crafts, and I can read and work puzzles, and cook the way I like to cook, from scratch and in no hurry.

MY ONLY PROBLEM IS that I am reverting to my old, natural circadian rhythms. I have always been nocturnal. Having kids, going to college and then teaching for 10 years forced me into a diurnal pattern that became habitual but not comfortable. Now I stay up until 2 or 4 AM and sleep until about 10 AM, which puts me out of sync with the rest of the world- just like the days when I was a young housewife with no kids and did my housework at midnight, to chagrin of my downstairs neighbors. (I don't have downstairs neighbors in Tullahoma, but I suddenly had an inspiring thought about how to wreak revenge on my very noisy downstairs neighbors in San Diego.)

Of course, I am too slothful to move furniture now. Off to work on a scrapbook, me. Call some time... but not before noon :)

It's official... I am my mother... and other horrors

Last May, I went on a shopping binge for Dave's mom, who was celebrating the big 77. Among the things I got for her were two floral house coats. I remember her AND my mom practically living in house coats during my childhood. Of course, they were never worn out of the house- they were HOUSE coats. Actually they were/are short sleeved, cotton, calf-length, button-front or snap-front robes. Women of my grandmothers' generation put them on over their day clothes while they did housework and cooked. The house coat protected their clothing like an all encompassing apron. If some one came to the door, the house coat was slipped off and the lady of the house looked presentable for her company.

The next generation- our mothers' generation- didn't bother to put on day clothes most of the time. Off came the night clothes, on went the house coat and that was dressed for the day- unless she had to go out. And by that I mean REALLY out. She might wear her house coat to pick up the kids at school as long as she didn't have to get out of the car, but she would never wear it to the grocery store or post office. She didn't bother to change out of her house coat if she had company, either, since her company was usually family, neighbors and kids. If a salesman or stranger came to the door, she would dash to get dressed, but those exciting events were few and far between. She had coffee with the milkman and the next door neighbor three times a week- in her house coat.

I remember thinking that I would NEVER be so slothful as to spend a whole day in a house coat. It was analogous to spending the whole day in your pajamas, in my opinion, and what was with all the florals and lace, anyway? Hideous. However, whenever I remember my Mom, I remember her in her house coats. She had tons of them.

SO, based on history, I naturally thought Dave's mom would be delighted with the ones I bought her for her birthday. I was wrong. She tottered into my bedroom with them one afternoon and gave them to me. "They're too big", she said. "I want you to have them." I had already washed them, so there was no returning them, and I accepted them gracefully. "I'll go get you some in a smaller size," I said, to which she hurriedly replied, "No, no, thank you, no." Guess she really loved them :)

And, of course, you know what happened. One day late in the week when I was WAAAY behind in the laundry, and feeling fat and dreading any article of clothing with a waistband, I slipped on one of the house coats. Damn, it was comfy. Damn, it IS comfy. So comfy I carried one with me to San Diego. Its' the perfect article of clothing. Too bad it looks like bed clothes, lacks style, and only comes in assorted florals.

So... gray hair... allergies... asthma...dry skin... crooked mouth...and now, house coats. I am my mother. When we meet again, she is SOOO going to laugh at me.

Bill Murray and Harry Potter

I have found myself sobbing over the deaths of people who have never existed twice this week. Admitting I am emotionally vulnerable since the recent death of my baby brother, I found the experiences cathartic.

The first heart-wringer this week was the quirky film "The Life Aqautic with Steve Zissou" starring Bill Murray, an actor whose characters aren't usually noted for their emotional depth. Something has happened to Bill Murray in the past couple of years. He seems to have found his own heart.
Evidence 1: He was speaking of his life and his six sons with Jay Leno and in the midst of describing how deeply he loved them, he wept. It was touching beyond words.
Evidence 2: "Lost in Translation" was the first cinematic hint that Murray had finally learned how to convey feeling in a way that suited both his personality and his persona. He made scenes believably moving without being maudlin.
Evidence 3: "The Life Aquatic". Perhaps it is entering middle age that has allowed Murray to plum the depths of the heart while maintaining his superficial cool. It is a tough time of life, when a person is neither young or old, but can see too clearly the end of days on the horizon and cannot help but wonder if anything really made a difference. "The Life Aquatic" is classified as a comedy, and it is droll and funny and subversive, like Murray himself; it is also a very moving treatise on loss. All the relationships in this movie are bizarrely complex in deeply human ways, and Murray threads his way through them with a dignity and grace that is fragile, redeeming, and beautiful.

"The Life Aquatic", with all its droll poignancy, triggered the first of my cathartic weeps. I have always, and will always, cry at movies. I am an embarrassment to anyone who goes into a theater with me. But I was at home in my own apartment watching this movie, and so felt free to weep freely. As I wept, I realized that, in this case, at least, the word "movie" really fits.

The second cathartic weep came upon reading the latest installment of the Harry Potter saga. I will not give away any of the plot, but as I read the last few chapters, I was sobbing unabashedly. Books can make me cry almost as easily as movies do, and the Potter books are, in their own way, treatises on loss as well. Think of the poor child Harry. He witnesses the murder of his parents at the age of one. He is sent to live with an aunt and uncle who, for ten years, mistreat and neglect him. He is so starved for connection that, when he goes off to school, it becomes the home he has never had even though every time he goes there, something tries to kill him, he ends up in the hospital, and he suffers trauma, fear, injury, and- in the later books- the deaths of friends. Harry has a loving heart. Where did that come from? He is not needy, he is not manipulative, despite all the years of emotional barrenness he endured. He makes real, committed connections with other people and cares for them deeply. Dumbledore comments on Harry's remarkable ability to love several times; because love is the one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is one of Harry's most powerful weapons. But how do the unloved learn to love? How does Harry manage to go on, book after book, fearing the loss or losing someone he loves?

And why do I care? Harry Potter does not exist. Neither do Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, the Weasleys... But I do. I feel his losses as I read, and weep for those who have never existed as emblems of those who have. Life IS about loss. When you reach middle-age as I have, you begin to see that. But it is also about love. And both can make you cry.

Sears-Mart... Who needs it?

I don't know what is happening to our K-Mart back in Tullahoma now that K-Mart and Sears are merging, but I DO know what is happening to the K-Marts here in the San Diego, and it sucks.

Let's start with the new name. I thought it would be a marketing coup to rename the conjoined stores S-Mart; S for Sears, Mart for K-Mart... S-Mart for s-mart shoppers. Dave was pretty sure Sears wasn't going to give up its name and I am glad I didn't bet with him. The new stores here are called "Sears Essentials". Yuck.

I don't see how that is going to help them, keeping the Sears name. It's not like the store has been doing banner business in the past few years- ESPECIALLY since they got rid of the world renowned Sears Catalog. How stupid was that- getting OUT of the catalog business just as it, and on-line sales- were starting to boom?! IDIOTS!

I personally have always hated Sears, and it's been literally years since I have shopped at a Sears store. The only things that store was good for, in my opinion, were Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances- which are really Maytags and Whirlpools, anyway. When, after being a Sears card holder for over 20 years, Sears refused to deliver or install a very expensive refrigerator we were going to buy with cash to little out-of-the-way Tullahoma, I was done with that store. We got our refrigerator- for less- from Lowe's in little out-of-the-way T-Town.

I've never cared for K-Mart, either. It is a really hateful place to shop. There is no climate control, and that is a nationwide phenomenom. The stores are hot in the summer and cold in the winter, poorly staffed, poorly stocked, and often dirty. There is one and only one reason to go to K-Mart and her name is Martha Stewart.

I heard from one of the employees at the K-Mart here that, short of a miracle of negotiation, Sears Essentials will NOT be carrying the Martha Stewart lines. PUH-LEEZE! What else did K-Mart bring to the table? As much as I hate K-Mart, I was in there all the time because I love Martha Stewart. Her products are well-thought out, well- executed, fashionable, functional, and damn good values. Without Martha Stewart, I will have absolutely no reason to step into another K-Mart, regardless of what they choose to call it.

I am a world class shopper. I like to shop. I like to spend. God has blessed my hubby and I at the end of our working careers with a pretty hefty disposable income, and I dispose of it. K-Mart used to get a big chunk of it. Sears didn't get a dime. Sears Essentials will not be getting a dime of it either. I will go where the Martha Stewart line goes for my housewares, linens, towels, and accessories. I like her stuff. I have no use for Sears or K-Mart without it.

Wonder how long Sears Essentials will last without it? Maybe she'll go to Target. Think we'll ever get a Target in Tullahoma? Gee, I wish I had Martha's number...

No vampires??

I have had a weird sort of disappointing relief upon returning to San Diego. You may recall that I was suspicious that my new neighbors are vampires. I have seen them only once, and they were beautiful in a scary, anorexic, cowboy Goth sort of way. They never come out during the day. Or night, for that matter. As I said, since they moved in, I have only seen them once, that first night as they glided up the walkway in the moonlight and disappeared into their apartment. No sound, no smells of cooking, no music or sound of running water have come from that apartment since. An eery silence descended that has been disturbing yet thrilling.

On my return, however, it appears the "romance" is over. First of all, Kelly has, in fact, seen the neighbors and in the daytime, too. I have grilled her about the people she saw- did she actually see them come out of or go into THAT apartment? What did they look like? Was it really day- was the sun out? She seems pretty confident that she has seen the new neighbors. And in the daytime.

And as if that wasn't bad enough... I could discount her reports but I cannot dispute the evidence of my own eyes. No, no, I have not seen the new neighbors. I have seen their door mat.

It has lady bugs on it. Lady bugs. What self respecting vampire would put out a door mat with roly poly beetles on it? It is depressingly cheery. One part of me wants to believe that it is just a lure- sure, come on in, it's safe in here, heh, heh, heh- but no. No. You'd have to see this door mat to understand my disappointment. It's cute.

Well, there goes the last vestige of adventure and intrigue in my life. If you can't count on your neighbors to be vampires, what's left?

Sigh.

Pet peeves, Volume I

I don't generally write about bodily functions, but I can't discuss my most recent pet peeve without alluding to some of them. Let the squeamish be warned.

Some wrong-headed environmentalist*- probably from California, which is where most wrong-headedness seems to come from- thought it would be smart to invent- and then foist on the American public- the low volume toilet. The reasoning behind this abomination is that using less water per flush will conserve water and help to ensure a cleaner, less processed water supply.

This reasoning might hold water if all people even did was pee, but as we all know, people produce other denser products that need to be flushed. Low volume toilets are not up to the task. SOOO... for every normal flushing of the large intestines, there follows a minimum of three toilet flushings to move the detritus out of the commode. Three, times the number of people in the household, times the number of evacuations per day. Low volume toilets. What a savings.

And, of course, low volume toilets don't have a large volume of water to produce the good hefty pressure needed to move solids so at least a couple of times a week, it's PLUNGER TIME!! Is there any task- other than changing dirty diapers- more hateful than plunging a backed-up toilet? I don't even like the fact that I produce fecal matter, so you can imagine my joy in having to deal with it. I want one big flush and everything gone at once! I hope you're with me on this.

* There are right-headed environmentalists, by the way. They aren't in the toilet business.

Nature and nurture

My son is a very remarkable and interesting person, and has been since the moment he graced the planet and my life with his presence. Note I did not say "easy" or "sweet", though he can be sweet when he makes an effort. He has never been easy. He is too smart, too talented, too eclectic, and too damn stubborn to ever be easy, and he was born in a hurry. Patience is not his strong suit.

My son is a big, handsome charmer with a smile that knocks you off your feet, and dimples the size of New Jersy. Though he is truly is own man, he is also his father's son; intelligent, intellectually curious, physically skilled, a problem solver. More than anyone else, however, he reminds me of his two grandfathers. In any argument over which has the greater influence in the development in a personality, nature or nurture, the answer is almost always "both". My son proves the rule. He has known my father all his life. He never knew Dave's father. Yet both men live on in him, and I see little evidences of them in his complex personality every day.

My dad, who calls himself "Lovable Bill" is mercurial, charming and a natural salesman. He is not an easy person either, (though for different reasons). At 80, he is still a handsome man and he knows it. He thinks very well of himself. Bill is alternately completely selfish and completely generous. He has an incredible green thumb and used to have some of the most beautiful lawns and gardens in town, back in the day when he owned his own home. He has always been a bit of a male chauvinist, loving women without really thinking they were worth much, though he thought my mother, at least, was a "lady". I see some of these attributes in varying degrees in my son, especially the charm.

Dave's dad never got to meet my son. Dominic died two years before he was born, which was a terrible shame, because they would have really loved one another. Dominic could be stubborn and/or unreasonable, but most of my memories of him are filled with love. Dominic was blessed with so many gifts- everything but an education, the lack of which negatively affected his self-esteem. He was a master mechanic and could make or fix anything. He created a pen with a radio in it years before they become available on the market. He was a brilliant craftsman. He crafted his own violin and taught himself to play it. He taught himself to play the accordion, though he played it upside down because he was left-handed. He was a master builder, building or remodeling every house he ever owned. He was a master gardener. I remember helping him in his huge garden many years early in my marriage, and getting the benefit of the bounty that came from it. The first year of my marriage, Dave and I were helping rake leaves and Dave's wedding band slipped off his finger. We looked and looked and could not find it. As it started to get dark, we gave up and went home. The next day, Dominic called to say he'd found it. He'd gone out with a flash light to look for it and hadn't stopped looking until he found it. Such a romantic. He was a beautiful man, both physically and in his soul. My son even walks like him, an almost tiptoeing, rolling kind of a walk.

Like his grandfathers, my son is a beautiful man. He has many talents, skills and gifts and many of the personality traits of both my dad and Dave's. He is more than the sum of his parts, as are we all, but in my son, the influences that helped shape him are easy to see. It's not that I don't see traces of myself, or Dave, and any number of other people in my children. My daughter, for example, reminds me very much of her Aunt Rita. It's just that, with my son, there are times when it's almost like stepping back in time and seeing my dad as a young man, or Dave's dad as a young man. He's a better man than both of them, but they are there in him.

New World

My grandparents were adults during the Great Depression. Both sets were blessed in that my grandfathers had jobs and because they were gardeners. My grandparents produced flower gardens that literally stopped people in their tracks, back in the days when folks still took drives without destinations on Sundays after church. As beautiful as the flower gardens were, the important gardens produced vegetables and fruit. I can remember helping them harvest corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, rutabaga, turnips, cabbage, carrots, beans of every type, squash, pumpkin, peppers, onions, chives, herbs, blueberries, strawberries and grapes. My paternal grandparents had an apple orchard. My maternal grandparents had grapevines.

My own parents followed in this tradition, only my mother blanched and froze most of her produce while my grandmothers canned. Summers were scorching and there was no air conditioning, but the canning went on despite the heat; pickles, jams, jellies, stewed tomatoes, beans, and carrots were put up for the winter when they would not be available. Fruits and vegetables were still seasonal commodities in my childhood. You didn't get watermelon in the winter. Apples came in fall. You'd find an orange in your Christmas stocking.

But in the summer, the air was redolent with the smells of canning, of salt and sugar and vinegar, tomato and onion, as various fruits and veggies took their turn in the harvest. In the summer a hungry child could drag a carrot from the earth, tug a cucumber from a vine or pluck off a tomato and taste the soil and water and sun that had produced them. They had smells and textures.

Men and women both gardened, but it was women who did the preserving. Such hot, hard work, but the shelves in the root cellar would slowly begin to fill. Sometimes they would buy a couple of bushels of peaches from down south, and make wonderful cobblers and jams and syrups. People truly ate the fruits of their labors.

My maternal grandmother made her own bread three times a week. A slice of homemade bread hot from the oven, slathered with butter (not margarine) and dotted with homemade blackberry jelly... or homemade strawberry jam... oh, my.

The thing is, while other people stood in bread lines or at soup kitchens during the Great Depression, both sets of my grandparents were able to feed their families- and less fortunate neighbors- from their gardens. They shredded newspapers for compost, they saved food scraps for compost, and leaves and grass clippings, and traded compost for manure with their neighbors who had cows or horses. The compost and manure were combined to feed the gardens that fed them. They understood the nature of want. They were conservative in the truest sense of the world.

I do not garden or can. I am entirely dependent upon the contents of my local grocery for my nutrition. And I begin to notice that tomatoes may be red, but they have no smell or taste. Most produce is mass produced, which means it is moderately palatable and moderately nutritious. These are the sacrifices required to have fruit and veggies "out of season"; the summer air is redolent of nothing but refrigeration. Maybe it is time to return to the Victory Garden, if only to rediscover- or discover for the first time, depending on your age- what a real tomato smells and tastes like.

I fear all produce is being hybridized to a uniform mediocre sameness for the sake of commerce; inbred for better resilience during shipping, for longer shelf life, for greater resistence to pests. When the last grandchild of the Great Depression has died, will the memories of summer produce pulled from the ground die too?

Things I have learned from living with my daughter... again

From just about the time Kelly could talk, she told us she was moving out the minute she turned 18. She said it more frequently the older she got. By 16, it was such a litany that I stopped hearing it. So imagine my chagrin when, at 18, she really moved out! She has been living more or less on her own ever since, with periodic significant others sharing space for variable periods of time. She and I had not shared space for any prolonged period of time until January of this year when she came to San Diego for a two week visit and kept getting cast in plays. It has been an education for me living with her for weeks at a time. Here are some of the things I have learned so far.

1. I am an inherently aggravating person. Most times, just the sight of me is aggravating.
2. No matter where I am, I am in the way. I am an in the way kind of person.
3. Everything is my fault, but it's not my fault it's my fault, that's just the way things are.
4. There is no way I can help with anything. It's my fault, I should just get out the way, I am being aggravating.

Living with an actor is a challenging thing. To quote a line from one of my favorite plays, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (Tom Stoppard): "Actors are the opposite of people", which, I guess by definition, makes people the opposite of actors. Actors are high-strung, sensitive, semi-hysterical creatures. People may live on the edge of hysteria. Actors build condos there.

Despite my shortcomings as a person, I think she kinda likes having me around. I kinda like being with Kelly, too. She really is a force of nature, and sees the world so differently than I do. We share some traits in common; we are both obsessive, though about different things; we are both funny, though in different ways; and we are both smart, which makes things fun. We stay up late nights she doesn't have rehearsals and just hang. It's really cool. If she wasn't my daughter, and there wasn't a 22 year age difference between us, we might have been destined to be friends. I am sure we must have been friends in our previous lives, because she really tolerates me rather well in this one.

Lovingly dedicated to my daughter, the actor. Break a leg.

Random thoughts

I am having another sleepless night, so thought I would post a few thoughts that have been rattling around in my fevered brain.

• I have beome obsessed with a game called Super Text Twist, which is addictive. The game is simple. You are presented with six or seven scrambled letter from which you are to make a six or seven letter word, and as many other words as you posssibly can, in under two minutes. The game does not recognize many genuine words, but seems to have invented some of its own. That flaw aside, it is a compelling game. The problem is two-fold. Once I start playing it, I am riveted for ungodly amounts of time, aggravating the daughter and alienating the hubby- not that I care :) - and I am pathologically unable NOT to start playing it. The other problem is what has led to my sleeplessness. I keep anagraming words in my head. A word will pop into my brain: say, crackles. From crackles, you can get crackle, cackles, kale, sale, seal, ace, aces, ale, ales, leas, lea, lacks, lack, slack, sack, lakes, lake, slake, arcs, arc, cars, car, real, cracks, crack, creak, creaks, laces, lace, racks, rack, races, race, larks, lark, arks, ark, are, era, eras, ears, ear, sear, sake, scar, scare, acres, acre, rakes, rake... okay, my two minutes is up but I continue to anagram as other words pop into my head. I can see the words in my mind and it is very distracting. Hence writing a post at 3 am. Post, stop, spot, opt, opts, pots, pot, tops, top, sop.
• The Kiwis have to be celebrating tonight. Michael Campbell, who is part Maori and so as New Zealander as you can get, won the U.S. Open Golf Tournament, only the second Kiwi to do so, and he did it with dignity and panache. Tiger Woods finished second, finally, on Sunday, playing with the aggression he seemed to dampen earlier in the tourney. It was a remarkable comeback, and he was breathing down Michael's neck right down to the wire. I like to watch golf. It's the only sport I like to watch. I don't know if I would like to play the game, but it is a great game to watch. People who think it is boring are not paying attention. It is a head game that requires a great deal of mental and emotional toughness. I was actually rooting for three players today, Michael, Tiger and Jason Gore. And what happened to Goosen? He went all to pieces. Such a shame. Give golf a go sometime. Like baseball, it is a game of subtlety, grace, and strategy- it's just individual where baseball is team.
• Kelly's play opens on Friday but we will miss opening night. We will catch her performance in July. She went to a theater party last night and had a great time, got lots of recognition and validation. San Diego is just so right for her. I know she has to return to Nashville to take care of business, finish her lease, and store all her worldly possessions that she doesn't ship out here, but I wish she didn't have to. She has built momentum here, I hate to see that stall.
• Today we celebrated Father's Day with presents, cards, and home made pizza. Tomorrow we will celebrate Dave's birthday with presents, cards, stuffed pork chops and a trifle. Jeez, I have to be nice to him two days in a row. Shouldn't be asked.
• I bought a subscription to the Old Globe Shakepeare series. A Winter's Tale, A Comedy of Errors, and MacBeth, all in the open air theater, Shakespeare under the stars. It will be so cool. I got the teacher appreciation rate, which made it affordable. I printed out all sorts of things from the Motlow and AAUP websites, and sent them in to Kat, the lady who solicited my patronage from the Old Globe, to document my career, short as it was. This really is a theater town. I am looking forward to Shakespeare nights.

And so, thus endeth the random thoughts. I am going to try to get to sleep now. Sleep. Lees, lee, eels, eel, pees, pee, see, else,peels, peel. Oh, dear.

New neighbors and bad dreams

No sightings of the new neighbors since the first... though I am not surprised. I suspect they only come out at night, and they may come out as bats for all I know. I doubt they will come out as wolves, unless they can turn into little bitty ones that look like coyotes. You don't see many wolves around here, though you do see bats and coyotes. If I ever encounter them, I will work my diabetes into the conversation- I'd be a bit of a snack rather than a full-course meal for them. Wonder if they have blood type preferences? Of course, it is entirely possible that they are NOT vampires... nah.

A bad dream about someone I loved a long time ago woke me out of a sound sleep this morning. I think we maintain a small cache, a tiny residual, of every love stored somewhere in our brains which we tap into during unguarded moments, like sleep. In my nightmare, this person I once loved was badly hurt and might die. Friends were gathering to keep vigil, but I could not let my fear, worry or love show, because he was someone else's. In the same dream, as we were leaving the scene of the original injury by car, following the ambulance, I guess, we witnessed a horrible crash of a green VW bug with three people in it, hit with such force that the car became semi-liquid and molded to the people thrashing around inside it until they were still. The adult driver was decapitated. The two slightly younger passengers were dead. I woke up.

So you tell me- where the hell did that come from? And how do I shake it? I hate nightmares because they hang around after waking, and put the whole rest of the day on unsettled footing. I am used to my dreams having an internal logic that makes no sense once I am conscious. I can even recognize some dreams as types- wish fulfillment, fear confrontation, past revisiting- but nightmares are a different kettle of fish. They are like a trip to the Twilight Zone, so surreal and yet so present; so charged with emotional energy that the return to the waking world carries wisps of that energy with it. I've been having nightmares a lot recently. I wish they'd stop.

We have a superstition in my family to never tell your dreams before breakfast unless you want them to come true. I have just ignored that superstition. Kelly and I were up until 5 am yesterday/today, don't ask me why. She is still asleep, but I was awakened by a bad dream at 9 am and haven't eaten yet. It's time to let some of my superstitions go. My dreams affect no one's reality but my own. I hope. I'll keep my fingers crossed, just in case.

Birds, vampires, and really good coffee

Dave is leaving for New York for a week beginning tomorrow (June 12) and will return on the 19th. I hope he doesn't miss the Gilliam's visit. He'll be back for Father's Day and his birthday. Wish Mama and Jake and his crew could be here for that.

Kel and I have been enjoying the joys of Starbucks. Mocha frappacino. Yum. Caffe latte. Double yum. We have also found a WONDERFUL place to eat called Mimi's Cafe. We took Dave there for breakfast this morning. Kelly had Pain Perdue, which is french toast stuffed with cream cheese and orange marmalade. She let me try a bite. Unbelievable. Dave had corned beef hash and poached eggs. I had eggs benedict made with blue crab cakes instead of ham. Exquisite. Kelly and I had mimosas. It is almost worth the trip out here for the food. Sadly, for pudgy me. Sigh. (Burp).

The weather here is cool and there are wonderful breezes. Not much sun; lots of cloud promising rain that never comes. And everything is in wild bloom here. It is so strange and so beautiful.

Speaking of strange and beautiful... I am getting new neighbors. Sadly, the obnoxious young drunk downstairs is not moving away. No, the sweet and quiet Maria and her hubby next door have left us, for greener pastures, I hope. I think I have caught a glimpse of my new neighbors. I spend a lot of time in the office, which is on the corner of the building, and I usually keep the shades open during the day, so I see a lot- and a moving van is hard to miss. I watched an amazing number of furniture pieces and boxes being pulled from that van all day yesterday and yesterday evening, just as the sun was setting, I think I saw the neighbors. They were very tall and very slim, dressed entirely in black, with long, silky black hair, both of them looking like models for a style that could be called Transylvania meets Urban Cowboy. Kind of goth buckaroos. Beautiful, but scary. And I have only seen them at night, which gives me pause. I must remind Dave and Kelly to NEVER invite them in should the occasion arise. I think I have garlic...

I have the window next to my desk open. I have been missing bird sound since I got here. From my window I hear vehicles and music and loud conversations but not much in the way of bird sounds. Today, however, I had two lovely moments with the California avians. I watched a dove building a nest in the inner courtyard by the elevator. She was so close to me I could have touched her- habituated to people and unimpressed with me, at any rate. The other moment came through this window that is now permitting a night breeze to brush past me. This afternoon, during an unexpectedly quiet period, I heard the songs of birds. It made my day.

It also made me homesick. In Tullahoma, my house is set back from the road and protected by a stand of woods from street and neighbor sounds. My living room juts into the woods at the back of the house and I can not only watch birds fly back and forth between the trees but I can hear their clipped, musical conversations. From my kitchen, I can watch them congregate at the bird feeder, and see and hear hummingbirds argue over the lush red liquid in their feeder. Titmice have tried to drink the hummer's food- too silly. And the obligatory squirrels tamper with the bird feeder, but that's okay- seed in the garden for the ground feeders. My bird books reside in the kitchen bookcase, close at hand. Simple pleasures.

Watching the birds makes me think of Pat, who loved bird watching. The great and good ladies of the GFWC Centennial Woman's Club of Tullahoma took up a collection and placed two memorial books in the Coffee County Lannom Memorial Library in his memory. I can't think of a better remembrance. He would be so tickled. I need to get my binocs with my books when I get home. In the meantime... I wonder if the new neighbors fly?

Life's little ironies...

I am here in San Diego, and my hubby is on a plane headed for... TULLAHOMA! This is all a Cubic conspiracy to keep us apart, and/or to drive me crazy (yeah, short drive, I heard you). He will only be there tonight and tomorrow, just long enough to meet with the Atlanta customers, pick up the nine hundred thousand things I forgot to bring, leave the household money I forgot to leave, and confuse the hell out of his poor mama.

I am drifting badly here lately. It's like I have lost my bearings. Mostly I drift off to sleep. Do you think 12 hours a day is too much? Well, I do, too, so I have been making some Gatsbyesque "resolves" to do better and to stop being such a slug. I decided to revisit my old craft skills. Thought I'd try my hand at knitting; bought needles and ribbon yarn and spent three days screwing up what should have been an easy project. I bought big needles figuring they would be easier to handle with my insensate fingers, but now I'm thinking they may be too big. I have jewelry craft stuff here, maybe I will tackle that next.

I have also been working on the policy manual and job descriptions for the Mother's Day out we are trying to start at my church. It is very slow going, but I am plugging away at it- when I can get to the computer. ;) My beloved daughter and I have just amicably resolved a jurisdictional dispute over the computer, so I should be a lot more productive.

In the meantime, I have to go shopping (darn!) for sundries and other things too personal to mention, so I am signing off for now. (I am actually encroaching on Kelly's computer time while she is in the shower, and her revenge will be swift!) More later- I have the night shift.

So long and thanks for all the fish... or something like that

No, I am not leaving the planet. I am just preparing for my last day at home. Sigh, sigh, and sigh again.

Marcia stopped by today and we watched one of my favorite flicks, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and had a good chat. My brother Bill called- he and Dad are NOT going to move to Tullahoma and live in the house on Mac's Lane, so it will be going on the market as soon as I can get it ready. My "goddaughter" Kat called, all excited because a CD and three volumes of a manga we are reading, Fruits Basket, arrived. A manga is an interesting sort of thing- a kind of graphic novel in serial form, it's like still-life anime, read from back to front and clockwise, so it takes some practice to get the reading sussed. I will take the three she just brought over to me to San Diego, as she will be visiting me there, and maybe will have the newest three with her so that we can make an exchange. Kat and I are true buds.

In San Diego, I will be finishing the plans for the LOTR party, working on the "Mother's Day Out" program we are starting at my church, and doing some painting. Kel and I will be running around, I am sure.

Tomorrow Dave and I will finish off some household chores and tie up some loose ends and pack. We are skipping the company picnic to spend a day with Mama before we leave her here "unfriended and alone"... Her caretaker says she does well enough after the first day or two, and she has been feeling better, so I hope all will be well. Last night, Jake, Becca and the kids came for dinner, and Emily tried to feed herself with a spoon. Mama was the primary victim of baby-food fall-out and had a ball. I hope the kids stop in to see her once or twice while I am gone.

Off to bed, me, and then soon, off to the friendly skies.

New blog name- my real one

Just a note- I have changed my blog name to Kate. Old blogs will still list me as NeeNee, which is what my grandkids call me. New blogs.... you get it :)

Off again... sigh

The last day of May is fading, and so am I.

I started my day with saying good-bye to Dave- again- as he is off to Washington until Friday. That cheery start was followed by blood work (yuck) and a general feeling of malaise. I just have a few more days at home. We are leaving for San Diego on Sunday, June 5th, and it appears we will be there until the 25th. In Dave-speak, two weeks = 20 days.

I really don't like being gone that long- Mama doesn't do well when we are gone for too long, and I haven't even taken a dip in my pool yet- but the change may just be good for me. I am still depressed about losing my brother and haven't seen my daughter in a good long while, so maybe this trip is just what I need.

It might be good to make myself scarce for awhile. Mama and I went out to dinner with Jake, Becca and the kids tonight, and I had a sudden illuminating thought that it might, at least where my granddaughters are concerned, be a good idea to go away long enough to be missed. I don't know if it is their ages, or if there has been a change in me, or whether I am unrealistically expecting them to feel about me the way I felt about my Grandma Brooks, but lately, my relationship with the girls has not been particularly satisfying. I don't get any spontaneous affection from them and I have been feeling both taken for granted and neglected at the same time.

Maybe I am just emotionally vulnerable right now. I don't know. But sometimes I fear they are outgrowing me and that makes me very sad. I never outgrew my Grandma. But that was me. Grandma Brooks was my emotional mother; that was true the whole of our relationship. My granddaughters are better blessed than I was; they have Rebecca. Jake and Becca have created a stable, loving, enriching environment in their sweet home in Manchester. Maybe I need to become superfluous to the girls. I don't need to fill the "mama" role for Kendall and Haley any more. I just have to learn how to be grandma, I guess.

So, off to San Diego I go, determined not to let myself miss them too much, and to spend some time redefining myself- and giving them the opportunity to miss me, maybe. In the meantime... I will be packing and making lists and preparing Mama for our absence from here... again. Sigh. If only San Diego could come here. Here is where I really like to be. Off to bed, me.

A pretty good day

We celebrated Mama's 77th birthday yesterday. Mary Irene (Lakowski) Lapczynski Richards was born in 1928 in Detroit, the seventh of eight children. She had five brothers and two sisters and has outlived them all. She was two when her father died, and has outlived two husbands, one daughter and a granddaughter. She has endured 38 operations, most for the replacement of the joints of her hands and toes destroyed by arthritis, and has survived several microstrokes that have left her mentally impaired. She can no longer manage her own money, run her own household, drive a car, or remember to take her medications. She lives with us but mourns the loss of her apartment and the remnants of her independence. Most days, she is pretty melancholy but yesterday... well, let's just say she was really looking forward to her birthday, even if she can't always remember how old she is.

Because of the strokes, Mama is very childlike. So we kept that in mind planning her birthday. Knowing that kids don't like to wait for presents, we started the day with gifts from Dave and I right after breakfast- lots of them. Four pairs of shorts, five tops, two housecoats and lots of new undies; a new summer wardrobe she wanted, and other things she needed. She had a ball pulling each tissue paper wrapped gift out of the three gifts bags. She carried everything to her bedroom cackling with delight.

Dave had the day off, so she got to spend the day with her son. She and her "baby" sat on the porch swing and watched westerns together. In the early afternoon, the Rose Cottage delivered a bouquet of helium balloons and a small flower arrangement in a teacup from George and Stephanie. Mama LOVES getting flowers and was as excited about the balloons as a kid.

At 4:30, Jake, Becca, Kendall, Haley, Delaney and Emily rolled in. Mama had requested meat loaf and mashed potatoes for her birthday meal, so I made that and all her favorites- corn, salad, cottage cheese, crescent rolls. I bought bright "Happy Birthday" paper plates, cups and napkins for the table, made her a cake and bought her favorite ice cream, Purity strawberry. We decorated her chair with her balloons, and had a nice supper together. We sang "Happy Birthday" and the goonies helped her blow out the candles. They helped her eat the cake and ice cream as well. Everyone was in a good mood, and the goonies were especially attentive to their Busha (Polish for grandmother.)

Before she went to bed, she toddled into the livingroom in her big pink bathrobe to give Dave and I a kiss and to thank us for the party. She looked adorable. Before I sat down to type this, I looked in on her. She was all curled on her little bed. She looks so sweet when she's asleep- just like a child.

And the new challenge is... pick-axe handle

My son has issued a second writing challenge to my daughter Kelly and I, and again has chosen a weird topic, this time an axe-handle (check his blog- there is a link to it on this page).

My son is a very interesting person. Despite having IMS (Incurable Misspelling Syndrome), he is a wonderful communicator with many gifts. He is an artist, a mechanical savant, an engineer without portfolio, a builder, tinkerer, musician, athlete, and lover of music. He is also an extremely good son. Even though he has his own yard to tend, once a week he comes here to care for ours, sparing his Aged P (aged parent, for those unfamiliar with Dickens, and Dave in this context, thank you). Lately, however, the demands of his life have precluded his doing an optimal job here and I have toyed with the idea of hiring someone else.

I actually gave one guy a try-out. He showed up early one morning- waaay too early to suit me. Polite convention makes it uncool to start making loud noises in the neighborhood prior to 9 AM. By 9 AM, all decent people who don't have night jobs should be up and about; it's an unwritten law, like no phone calls before 8 AM and none after 9 PM. Courtesy codes. Had the lawnman been a caller at that time, I would have hung up on him, but by the time my mind cleared, and I was fully awake, and in some fit state to be seen, he was disappearing behind our copse. He was using his own push mower instead of our riding mower, and he was being scrupulously meticulous, so his mowing seemed to go on forever. He took a break at about 10 AM, and then broke out the weed eater. He also broke out his CD player and a platform of speakers, setting them up on the tailgate of his truck and plugging them into the outlet on my garage. He cranked up his noise machine and the weed eater at the same time. I was expecting hip-hop or something, but instead, a lush swell of classical music swept across the lawn. He used the weed-eater in time with the music and it was almost like a ballet, he dancing nimbly, the weed-eater his partner, the music his muse.

At first, it was fascinating, this dance in the afternoon with the sweet smell of grass in the air. And then... then, somehow, it became irritating. He had only brought one CD with him and he played it again and again and again. I like classical music as much as the next person- unless the next person is my husband- but the drone of the weedeater and the endlessly repeating music from the CD very soon were working on my last nerve. I have a lot of nerve, so you can imagine. I signaled to him to lower the volume. He smiled and waved back. I walked out and asked him to turn off the music. He smiled, and nodded, and turned off the music. I went back into the house. After a five minute reprieve, the music was back on. Once again, I rushed to the door and signalled for him to turn off the music. This time, he pretended not to see me. I stomped out and asked him to turn off the music. He didn't smile or nod, and he didn't turn off the music, either. Instead, he reached over my shoulder and turned the volume down. I believe in compromise. I thanked him and went back into the house. You guessed it. Five minutes later, the volume increased to ear-bleeding levels and the house began to shake. When I ran to the door this time, he wasn't dancing, smiling, nodding or weed-eating. He was standing with his arms crossed and his legs spread out as if defying me to come out again. I turned, went through the kitchen, grabbing my cash en route, and went out to him by way of the garage. I did the only sensible thing to do when a seemingly amiable bully pulls your chain. I threw what I owed him plus another $40 into his face and took my pick-axe to his Handel.

Jake is back on the job. Such a good, quiet boy.


FOOTNOTE TO KELLY AND JAKE: I win :)

FOOTNOTE TO OTHERS: Everything about the lawn guy is fiction. I never considered firing my son.

Oh, frabjous day!!

In just four short days, on Friday, May 27th, two wonderful things will happen.

The first is the 77th birthday of Dave's mother. Mama is like a kid on her birthday, so we will do it up right. Balloons, cake, presents, birthday hat, the whole nine yards.

The second is that it is the last day of school for the Goonies! Oh, frabjous day! I get to see Emily, the Amazing Perpetual Motion Baby, several times a week while I am in town, but I don't get to see Kendall (AKA Rangy Lil, age 10), Haley (AKA Noodle, age 8) or Delaney (AKA Pixie Dixie, just turned 6) anywhere near as often or for as long as I would like. It's all because of school. Damnable school. While I believe in education, I really hate school because it separates grandchildren from their grandmother. It tires them, and gives them homework, and makes it impossible for grandmothers to kidnap them on a week night and have some fun. My goonies go away on the weekends- Kendall and Haley to their mother, Delaney to her grandmother- which leaves me goonieless on the weekends as well. I now live for vacations, and summer vacation begins on FRIDAY, MAY 27!! I am going to get them en masse, and one on one- I am going to throw them in the pool, and do arts and crafts, and build tents, and go parading and I can't wait. I don't expect to see them everyday- just everyday I am in town. And some nights, too! I anticipate sleepovers and makeovers and staying up late to watch movies and eat popcorn. I used to say, when they were little, that I was their favorite toy. That's not true anymore. They are growing up and away from me, faster than I am prepared to accept, of course. "That's what kids do," Haley said, wisely, "they grow and change." But summer turns back time. If I can be a kid again, so can they :)


FOOTNOTE FOR JAKE: BUCKETS and BUCKETS of kudos to you for figuring out how to finesse the writing challenge. Now, can we move on? :)

Falling back into greased grooves

It has been a hectic couple of days.

Dave, Jake and I didn't get in from our flight home from Michigan until 11:30 PM on Monday, May 16. May 17th, around noon, my brother Bill and his girlfriend Anna stopped by for a short visit on their trip home to Texas. I juggled preparing for my woman's club meeting with being a hostess, with mixed success. About 4:30, my dear friend Taffy popped in to hang out until it was time to leave for the meeting. Mama and Anna joined us as well, so at 6 PM, after loading the car with everything that needed to go, the four of us headed out for the Butler's Pantry. We had a great meal, a good meeting, a fun fundraiser and only one brief moment of poignancy: the good ladies of GFWC Centenniel Woman's Club collected money to be used to place a book in the Coffee County Lannom Memorial Library in Pat's memory. I was very touched.

Today, May 18th, life began to settle back into greased grooves again. I fought with the pool guy- whom I have decided to fire- did some grocery shopping, cooked two meals, and did a couple of loads of wash. Becca brought the Goonies over for a short visit with Uncle Bill, but he is temporally dyslexic and didn't get back from Lynchburg in time to see them before they had to return home. As today is her sixth birthday, I gave Delaney her birthday present, a canopy bed and matching dresser for her My Twinn doll. Her reaction was disappointing, but I think she may not have been feeling well; she was uncharacteristically bratty when it came time to leave and cried for no good reason all the way to the car and down the drive.

Dave left for Atlanta where he will spend the night tonight. He has a meeting with a customer there and will be back tomorrow. He called around 8 pm while I was still farting around with the pool so we didn't talk long.

Shortly after his call, Mama woke up- from a nightmare, I suspect- and was horribly distressed because she couldn't "remember" if it was day or night. She kept saying she was losing her mind. It took some doing, but I got her calmed down. She pointedly asked me not to put her in a home, which reinforced my suspicion that she had awakened, disoriented, from a bad dream. Poor old thing. I finally got her tucked into bed again.

Around 11:30 PM, Bill and Anna left for Houston.

Tomorrow Becca wants to make a quick run to Murfreesboro but I will have to call Marcia before we go as I think she said something about our running around tomorrow. I need to get to Walgreens for presciptions, pick up Dave's shirts from the cleaners, and get my goddaughter Kat's birthday card to her; she shares Pat's birthday, May 17th. I also have to swing by Tullahoma Floor Covering to price a new countertop for the house on Mac's Lane we are going to list soon.

Friday Donna is delivering the mugs she made for our "Lord of the Rings" film festival, coming sometime this summer. All three movies, back to back, and all seven Hobbit meals- breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. It takes a lot of provender to feed Hobbits, you know.

Off to bed, me.

Home again from Pat's memorial

At 4 PM yesterday, in Chicago, Dave, Kelly, Jake and I parted ways after a weekend with my family. Kelly returned to San Diego. The rest of us came home. It was a hard, strange weekend, but it did, as I had hoped, bring me some closure.

Saturday was spent with my dad. Sue, Andy, Bill, his friend Anna, and those of us from Tennessee, met at Dad's and then traveled to South Lyon to Mike's house. My brother Mike is the sweetest guy in the world, and we don't get to spend enough time with him. I had, as I always do, a good time with his wife Yvonne and my gorgeous niece Megan.

We had a good time together. Kelly and Jake got to engage with aunts, uncles and cousins who have only been on the margins of their lives. Kelly had not been in Michigan for the past almost 10 years, so some of her younger cousins had no memory of her at all, though they had heard about her.

My kids are closer to Dave's side of the family. Mama and Paul came every Easter, and often returned for a visit in the fall, and in each of our trips to Michigan to see my family, we would spend a day with Dave's. My family, with the exception of Bill, has been generally remiss in making visits to Tennessee. For the most part, to stay connected with the Michiganders, the Tennesseans have had to make the effort. And we did make the effort regularly when the kids were younger. But one does not have to be a rocket scientist to know when the need for connection is not reciprocated- both of my kids commented on it several times during the weekend, how they missed out on so much because we had moved away, and I felt sad for them.

And I felt sad for myself, as my siblings continued to tease me about things from our ancient past. It's always the same few memories that get dredged up again and again. I burned a steak when I was 14. I am 55 now, I've cooked since then. Have they no more recent memories of me to draw on? I seem to be a frozen image for them, a set piece of half-remembered, mostly negative, incidents. They don't know who I am now at all.

Sitting in Mike's kitchen, I could not remember a single incidence of such a thing happening in mine- all of us together, playing games, catching up. Well, we weren't all together this time, either. Pat and Barb were not there. Maybe it was all to the good that the gathering seemed so... surreal. It was the first gathering without Pat, at least for my crew.

Sunday we spent with Barb and the girls. At 5 pm, we went to Temple Beth-el for the memorial service. There were about 250 people there. Sue spoke, then Mike, then me, and then Bill. Each of Pat's siblings said their good-byes. Jack Austin spoke, Carol Middel spoke, and a couple of Pat's good buddies spoke. Pat's youngest, Jessica, tried to speak and couldn't do it, which broke the hearts of everyone in the room.

But there was also a lot of laughter during that service, as there should have been. Pat had a great sense of humor, and was making people laugh right up to the end of his days. It was what people remembered and loved the most about him. There was a nice meal after, and my children got to meet some of their more distant relations; two of my great-aunts, my cousins Debbie and Lynn...

We returned to Mike's that evening for a visit with a dear friend we hadn't seen in years. Monday, we lunched with Barb at her parent's house and then headed for the airport. The four of us together, our own little nuclear core, with beloved satellites waiting for us on our return- Jake's beautiful wife Becca, the four fabulous goonie sisters, Mama. We are a tight group, we four plus five plus one. It was a comfort having them with me. Becca and Mama comforted me here. My children were a comfort there. Whatever nostalgia I may have for how things might have been had we stayed in Michigan, I have no complaints about how things are here and now.

It was good to spend time with my siblings and my dad. But on the flight home, I realized we were returning to, not leaving, the people who know us best.


Today would have been Pat's 46th birthday. May perpetual light shine upon him.

Time to say good-bye

My sister Sue called last night, and we had a long talk. I feel a little better about the trip to Michigan now. She helped. She doesn't usually. Usually, she means well, but pushes all my buttons making me feel angry, manipulated and impotent. Last night, either she was being more sensitive or I was being less so, but we cried together and ended the conversations with heartfelt I love yous.

Later this morning I will meet Jake in Manchester and we will drive to the Nashville Airport. Kelly is meeting us there. We will fly to Dallas where Dave will join us and then all four fly to Detroit. A very convoluted way to get from Point A to Point B, but such are the vagaries of Frequent Flier Miles.

I am so not looking forward to this trip. My brother's body has already been reduced to ashes. There will be no funeral, just a memorial service, in a temple instead of a church, where flowers are not permitted. It is going to feel slightly surreal, I am sure. It has been so hard waiting here alone in Tullahoma for a memorial service that is taking place more than two weeks after his death. I am feeling unusually fragile and fear I will lose control of myself at some point. I have been feeling physically sick for three days now. My head hurts. My heart hurts. My blood sugar is soaring or dropping, depending on the time of day, and I have been dangerously light-headed twice today. I am heartsick and the rest of my body is following suit.

It is an inconceivable loss, the death of a much younger brother. I remember him as a baby, as a child, as a teen, as a man, in much the same way as I remember my own children. Sue and I were surrogate mothers to Mike and Pat because our mother was a semi-invalid for almost our entire childhoods. We split the motherhood role. Sue was the nurturer, the story book reader, the tucker in at night. I was the disciplinarian, the enforcer. I didn't show my soft side to my brothers because I needed to maintain fear. I was given responsibility without authority, and so needed to be harder, meaner, scarier and tougher than they were so that not doing what I said was certain to be met with ruthless retribution. It was in hardness that I kept them safe and taught them the proper path.

But the soft feelings were there. I loved my baby brother. I dressed him up like he was a doll, and dragged him around in a wagon until my arms were pulled out of their sockets. When he was very little, he couldn't say "Kathy", as I was called then, and, to the delight of my siblings and cousins, called me "Kaka". Later, I was either Katie or Sissy. Not Kate. Not Sis. He must have known those softer feelings were there.

During our last visit together, Pat told me he was surprised at how well I had gotten my temper under control. I was angry all the time when I was a kid and young adult, and inclined to lash out suddenly and cuttingly at anyone who annoyed me. I told him I finally realized that I was taking my anger out on innocent people and not the people I was angry with, so I stopped doing it. He looked at me with something like wonder in his eyes.

Twenty five years of living separate and apart from my brothers and sister has robbed me of the opportunity of watching them evolve, and vice versa. Their image of me is still somewhat frozen in terms of our shared childhood. But I am not that hard, angry person anymore because I don't need to be. They will expect me to be strong this weekend. That is their image of me. I fear I won't be.

David left for San Diego the day after Patrick's death, so I have been trying to cope with my grief alone. I haven't done well. Complicating my grief is my resentment toward Dave for making me bear it alone. My rational self understands the demands of his job, and how he needed to be there because of job pressures. My irrational self feels it was unforgivable for him to leave me comfortless. I would not have done that to him.

I am tired and must be on the road in 6 hours, so I am going to bed. I must be rested. I am going to Michigan for my brother's memorial. I wish it had been me who had died instead.

My life as a sloth

I have a standard stress reaction- it times of high stress, I sleep. My stress reaction has jumped into overdrive this week. I will be flying to Michigan by way of Dallas with my children on Friday. Ah, the convolutions demanded by the use of frequent flier miles. Packing, going to the airport, and getting on a plane, especially one bound for Dallas, the most hateful airport in America, all stress the hell out of me and they have only become marginally easier as I have been traveling more. I find I really don't like the process of travel at all. I am stressed about going to my brother's memorial service and worried that I will fall to pieces during it. I have been terribly distressed about his death since it happened on April 30. Maybe the memorial will bring me some closure. Ironically, as soon as I return on the 16th, I must finish preparations for my woman's club award dinner, scheduled for May 17th- Pat's birthday. He would have been 46.
So I have been sleeping. I slept all day today. Poor Mama. I made her oatmeal at about 10 AM, and promptly fell asleep on the couch where I slept until 4 PM. I made her dinner, and dozed off again. I am such good company. Granted, I was feeling under the weather today, but I know what is going on. I can't face what is coming.
I have a recording of his last call to me on my cell phone. It was recorded after he got home from the hospital after his last surgery, roughly two weeks before he died. He sounds wonderful. His voice is strong, his mind is clear- he is Pat. I have been saving and resaving that message, unable to let go of the sound of his voice. I went to Verizon to see if there was a way to save it permanently but they have no such service. Play it into a tape recorder, they advise. Isn't that ironic? We have devices that can save the image of a person, save the sound of a person, long after that person ceases to be and those images and sounds become unsatisfying icons of the person we have lost. I know from experience if I record his message to a tape, I will never listen to that tape; I also know I cannot allow it to be deleted from my cell phone, not just yet. So every 5 days, I am reminded by my service that the message is about to be deleted. I listen to it and resave it because I cannot do otherwise. This is the way people are really haunted. I'm going back to bed now.

The gauntlet has been thrown down...

Check out my son's blog from time to time... icarus7474.blogspot.com
Kelly also has a blog; in fact she started the blogfest. She can be found at kellell.blogspot.com. Well, her thoughts can, anyway.

Both of my kids are pretty good writers, though Jake, like his dad, has a rather problematic relationship with spelling. (I don't think he proof-reads, either- he is a stream of consciousness kinda guy). Both of them are original thinkers.

Some years ago, we used to have short, short story contests among the three of us. We would set a deadline, pick a phrase to write about, and come out writing. On the deadline, we would read our stories to one another. It was always cool to see how diversely we handled the same topic. Once we stopped living in the same house, it became harder to do stuff like that. And now with almost a whole continent between us at any given time, you'd think it would be impossible.

BUT NO!!!! We are bloggers! And we read one another's blogs. And we comment on them, which no one else, for the most part, seems to do, at least with my blogs, anyway. But I digress. On his page, Jake has proposed another contest. Deadline: May 20. Phrase/word: "bucket". No word from Kelly yet- she is currently in rehearsal for a new show in California, a British farce called "Move over, Mrs. Markham" and hasn't been blogging on as much here lately. But I'm game. I'm up for it. I plan on kicking ass. What the hell! Bucket!

My baby brother

I lost my baby brother Patrick Saturday morning, April 30, 2005. He fought cancer for ten excruciating months, and I honestly believed, until the last few days of his life, that he was going to win the fight.
I cannot describe my pain. I am the oldest of five and he is the youngest. My kids are grown, his kids still need him. In a symmetrical world, I would be the one who is gone and he would be here for his daughters' graduations and weddings and first babies.
The rest of my family has been better prepared for his death for a variety of reasons. They were there in Michigan and saw his battles at close hand. I only heard about them after the fact. They saw his pain. I heard him talk when he was pain free. They believed the doctors when they said he'd be dead in a year, and so have been in a kind of sotto voce continuous mourning throughout these past months. My mourning began on Saturday. They are together to comfort one another. I am here.
I know that is by choice. I know I chose not to go to Michigan during the last few days of his life. Bill and Barb both advised me to stay here and that is what I wanted to hear. I wanted permission to remember him the way he was when we spent our week together in March. He was very thin and frail, but still Patrick. Still strong, still sharp-witted, still good company and my good friend. I really, really loved him and I can't believe he is gone.
I can't seem to stop crying. During this whole ordeal, I don't think I cried more than a couple of times; I was operating under the idea that he was living with cancer, not dying from it. Even so, we had a couple of poignant moments where we both lost it for a bit. Not pity parties- there was no self-pity ever- but there was sadness and fear and regret, and we cried over them. And I cried over his pain.
Now my tears are entirely selfish. I want my baby brother back, alive and whole. And I would very much like to have Mike's arms around me, and Bill's shoulder to cry on, and Susie to mother me just a little. We will all be together for his memorial on May 15. All but Pat, of course. How can there only be four of us now?