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?

I have had a lot of jobs in my life, most of them unskilled labor. I was an incompetent secretary at 18; a sales clerk for Sears; a grocery check-out; a ward clerk at U. of M. hospital; a contributor to a craft store; a housekeeper/babysitter... I never made a lot of money, never really enjoyed my work, and certainly never felt challenged or fulfilled.
At 34, I went back to college to get my degree. I earned my A.S. in biology in 1986, my B.S. and teacher certification in 1989, and my M.S. in 1993. I finally started a career in 1993. I was 44. I was an instructor of biology and on top of the world. I loved my job, I was challenged, fulfilled, and finally was making decent money and was something beside a housewife and mother who worked odd jobs for Christmas money. I finally had a little status. I rose through the ranks, became tenured, was named to "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" four times, won the Foundation's Faculty Excellence Award twice, and made a place for myself. I was the lab supervisor for the McMinnville Center and lead person for the science program there.
As time went on, my happiness in the job deteriorated. Higher education in Tennessee is no place to find job satisfaction, appreciation, or even decent wages. My morale sank a little every year. But my love of teaching never wavered, nor my sense that what I was doing was important. I may have hated the way I was ill-used by the college, but I was committed to it, happy with it or not.
Still, some years ago, I began to toy with the idea of moving over to administration in some manner- maybe as head of the science department, particularly since the current head had been and was making my life on the job a living hell. I went back to school and earned my Ed. S. in 2003. I was promoted to Associate Professor, as high as you can go without a PhD. The promotion brought a glorious $600.00 a year raise in salary with it. I should have been happier.
Except at the same time, my husband was also promoted, and his promotion doubled his salary, which was impressive to begin with, and necessitated his being in San Diego at least two weeks of every month. Since he would be traveling extensively to other places the remaining two weeks, he asked me to take a one year leave of absence from my job to travel with him, at least to San Diego. After some very serious thought, I did just that. After all, it was just for a year, and might be fun. We set up an apartment in San Diego and bounced between Tennessee and California. I didn't do any of the other traveling with him because his geriatric mother lives with us, and likes having me around at least half the month.
After 11 years as a something, I went back to being a... what? I wasn't a housekeeper anymore, I have one. I am not a mother anymore, my kids are adults. I have always been a wife, but I am no trophy, so what am I? Men are not the only creatures who define themselves by their careers. It has been a rough year for my self-esteem and self-image.
Now the year is over, or almost over, and it is obvious that the travel to San Diego is not. Nor will it be. If I return to my job, I will seldom see my husband. If I travel with my husband, I cannot keep my job. I am facing a very unfair choice here, my marriage or my career. No matter how unhappy I may have been in that career, it is a big part of who I am. I have had a taste this year of returning to the "Dave's wife" status, and it has not been easy. Half of my life is now spent among people who do not even bother to include me in conversations. I don't work for Cubic; I am not a Cube, so that would probably be the way of things in any case; they are an insular, absorbed, uni-topic group. But it is hard.
I am going in to the college today to resign my position. It really is a no-brainer, the choice between husband and career. But it is not without pain and regret, and a certain amount of surprise and sadness that none of my nearest and dearest see it as any kind of a sacrifice at all. Yes, I was unhappy, but I was happy also, at least with the TEACHING component of my job. I enjoyed preparing for lectures, setting up labs, having the use of a lab whenever I wished, creating PowerPoints, figuring out new ways to present information. I enjoyed advisement and the interaction with the students. I loved the staff at my teaching center and my colleagues there. I will miss all of that terribly. I loved being effective, and seeing people grow in knowledge and confidence, and I love my subject area. For all the myriad things I will not miss about higher education, there are an equal number I will miss about teaching.
So my 11 year career ends today. I can't help but feel a little down about that. I was better at teaching than anything else I have ever done in my life, including being a wife and a mother. Somehow I must find the joy in being a... what? Again.

Shoes are not immortal

So my partner in crime Marcia and I are shopping at Peebles, a store that happily carries clothes in my size- which is to say, jumbo petite- when we happen upon a shoe sale. Buy one, get the second half price. I have just chosen three very nice outfits to take with me to the GFWC of Tennessee convention this weekend, so OF COURSE, my interest is piqued. Four pairs later, we leave the store.
My beloved husband likes to call me Imelda, suggesting, I think, that perhaps I have a bit of a thing about shoes. Well, frankly, I have a thing about many things. While it is true that things can't bring you true happiness, they don't exactly depress you, either. I am, by nature, an obsessive collector, and he seems to think that my "thing" about shoes is just another manifestation of that obsession. And, as per usual, he is wrong.
I am not obsessed with shoes, I just like having a nice selection. It has been my experience that most men are shoe deprived. They think if they have one black pair and one white pair, they are set. Most of the men I know have a three pair maximum- dressy, casual, tennies- and all three will be worn until they are held together by a single thread. Let a man spend a moderate amount of money on any piece of clothing, including shoes, and he will wear it/them long after they are stylish, the right size, or in fit condition to wear.
Women, on the other hand, and for the most part, seem to know that all things pass, including styles, and that nothing, including shoes, is immortal. I was simply conceding the frailty of life, the inevitability of mortality, and the changeable nature of the universe when I came home with four pairs of shoes. And I will look ever so cha-cha at the convention. Paint ALL your toenails, ladies, the sandal season it here!