AnchorWoman

Please worry about me

2011-01-17T20:58:00.000-06:00

The phone message from Dad is, "I'm in terrible shape. Please worry about me." I do worry. I have a black belt in worry.

Trouble is, I already spent two hours with Dad and another frustrating hour with his Medicare D prescription plan provider's phone menu today. I'm practicing balance, limits, and self-preservation now that Dad is just a few blocks down the street instead of 650 miles away.

Where can I get a WWYDIYWBIN wristband for Dad? Where can I get a WWIDIHWBIN bracelet for myself?

What would I do if Howie was back in Nebraska?

Dad, what would you do if you were back there?

How on earth do elderly people manage to find their way through the darn insurance phone menus? HOEDEPMTFTWTTDIPM would require a wristband as big as a hula hoop!

After a dismal noon mealtime with Dad Sunday, I needed a 1/3 lb. bacon cheeseburger with fries ASAP. Caregiving is going to make me a blimp in time for the Super Bowl! Got calls from a son and my sister while sitting in the booth. Knowing I have their emotional support is essential.

Still sitting and slurping my Barq's, I read Karen M. Thomas' essay in the Dallas Morning News instead of skipping to the Sudoku puzzle. This poignant feature had tears streaming down my cheeks right there in the burger joint.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Phone outside the box

2010-07-08T18:57:00.008-05:00

This wouldn't be a major telecommunication breakthrough for most people, but Dad called me from out in the corridor tonight. Yes, he is out in the hall, and amazed the miracle of his cordless phone extends that far from its mothership.

Dad has lost the social filters that keep him from blurting out whatever he is thinking. He uses his nightly news hour phone calls as a megaphone for insulting his roommate, the roommate's visitors, and the care facility staff. I'm embarrassed 650 miles away. I'm often insult fodder myself. Tonight the dynamic was a bit better.

The time just before and after supper is difficult for elderly people. Dad usually feels compelled to call me during this time, and I am most likely to be able to talk with him then. Dad is irritable, anxious, and truly obnoxious. Unfortunately, people converge in his room at this time to watch "Wheel of Fortune" and coax his Alzheimer's roommate to eat supper. This is a powder keg situation.

Phoning from outside his room is a good step for Dad, even if he misses the tv news and weather report. Thanks to the trained staff for helping other residents and families understand the characteristics of Dad's dementia. Thanks to so many for kindness and patience.

Out in the hallway, Dad won't insult his roommate's family. He will still announce his uncanny estimates for the weight of every staff member who walks down the hall. "Hush, Dad," I say. "You don't need to say that out loud!" You won't win a giant teddy bear for guessing weight and fortune.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

A flood of engagement and clarity

2010-06-16T18:52:00.004-05:00

News flash! Dad is totally on top of the current flooding situation in both the Elkhorn River area of Nebraska, and the region north of Oklahoma City including Edmond and Guthrie. Dad can reel off names of all the towns along Highway 81 near Norfolk, the number of bridges out, and the sandbagging operations. When I fact-check his reports, he has it nailed.

This same dear old fellow couldn't separate news of Israel's Gaza blockade from the depressing reports about BP's disaster in the Gulf of Mexico when I was visiting him. Most days he doesn't bother to concentrate on current events at all. His big challenge is squinting at the digital clock to decide when to start wheeling down to the dining room for meals.

Dad's not just engaged in the news. He has a fresh perspective and sense of gratitude to be "high and dry," and living in a facility that cares for and about him.

I'm wondering just what part of the disasters hook Dad's thoughts and drag them out of the fog. Is it the placenames recalling childhood homes and more recent visits? Is it the Dustbowl Era childhood memories of Nebraska droughts and floods? Is it the tactile experience of his own distant childhood efforts to build little dams on Willow Creek? Or is it a resurfacing of the empathy that often made him contribute to Red Cross efforts during international catastrophes?

I wish I could share with Dad the Google Maps satellite views and YouTube videos, and record his memories of the topography and history of the region. As it is, I'm just enjoying this window of clarity with Dad. I wouldn't wish flooding on any person, home, or community, but I'm thankful for this side effect.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Life imitating Tom Robbins

2010-05-21T20:32:00.006-05:00

Good grief! Dad is convinced that he's been invited to South America. He says his night aides won't let him leave. They want him to go back to sleep.

All this scenario needs is a parrot. It's been years since I read about Switters in his wheelchair. Dad is indeed a fierce invalid, and a recalcitrant dreamer.

I'm worn out trying to explain the use of a phone to Dad. He's lost the list of memory-dial numbers.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

The Wave

2010-04-12T19:41:00.007-05:00

Thank heaven for major league baseball on tv! Alleluia, and then some. The romaine growing on my patio is doing The Wave (in slow motion). I am doing The Wave with inflated beach balls. If the magic invisible stadium organist played the macarena, I would do that, too. If Kate Smith bumped me out of my seat in the seventh inning stretch and started belting, "God Bless America," I would buy her a hot dog with relish. And one for my dad with kraut. And one for me with extra mustard. Life is good.

Dad is charged up about the exciting Cubs game today. He knows all that went on, even if he can't figure out how to turn down the volume when I call.

For several months Dad's only interest has been cracker jacks. The staff advised me that eating caramel corn was considered a fine motor skill work-out at his age. Now we've got peanuts and pine tar. Yippee. So let's root, root, root for the old folks' home team. If they don't win it's a shame.

Is there blood on the carpet?

2010-03-26T18:14:00.003-05:00

Do you really need to call me at work? When my sons were adolescents and I was a working single mom we developed a useful guideline. I expected the boys to settle disputes and handle problems themselves up to the code level of blood on the carpet.

Tonight Dad has his undies in a bunch for no reason. Having left one phone message on my cell, he's calling and calling my home and cell phones so I can't even get a return call through to him. When I finally catch him he says he was about ready to call my brother to have him call me. What's the emergency? What's the problem? Is there blood on the carpet?!

Dad was just calling to tell me about his supper. This is our daily call. Sometimes it is the first of several evening calls. I remind him of the days when his grandsons had the blood-on-the-carpet rule. He remembers and laughs. For a second we are in the present remembering the past together in a relaxed way.

I love you. I'll call you tomorrow when I get home from work. Don't call me unless there's blood on the rug.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Downhill combined

2010-03-05T18:27:00.011-06:00

Dad has no patience for the Winter Olympics tv coverage. He was glad to be freed from figure skating competitions when Mom died five years ago. Now he can't tolerate any of the downhill events. Instead he wants to be scooting his wheelchair out the door to keep tabs on the hallway happenings of the skilled care floor.

Dad is assisted living's answer to Dick Buttons and Scotty Hamilton. He is all about scoring, judging, and commentating on the skilled care facility medal events. The nurses, aides, food-servers, bathers, therapists, activity coordinators, and housekeepers are all being judged on a his strict Eastern European Cold War scale.

It took three phone calls Thursday evening for Dad to fully judge and report the carpet cleaning event. One phone call was to inform me that the one-man sawed-off bobsled was actually a National Sanitation Service (NSS) Pony 20 SCA carpet extractor for cleaning the hallway.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

A Foggy Day in Lifesize Town

2010-03-04T19:32:00.012-06:00

It had me low.
It had me down.
The "17-day charge capacity" time and energy concept on his new Norelco rechargeable electric razor has Dad in a fog. He needs a lot of attention to talk him through. He needs more help to ponder the best way to break the safety seal on a tube of Avon hand lotion. Small projects, big worries.

Many recording artists have sung George and Ira's "A Foggy Day in London Town." I'm hearing Julie London singing from a clearance bin LP Dad brought home for our hi-fi in the mid-Sixties.

My little art students are beginning a trace-around project. I haven't tackled one of these projects for a couple years because they are joyful, messy, logistical nightmares. On the upside, trace-arounds are popular and fun to display.

Wednesday the kids took turns lying down on a big roll of brown butcher paper in a pose. I traced around forty-five kids. Seeing the outline is exciting as each child loves to know just how big he/she really is.

I hope to post photos of the completed project in April. Until then, I have my own visual aid letting me see exactly how big and ground down my teeth are. My, what big teeth you have, Grandma!

But in foggy Lincoln town my dad is shaving...

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

How was your guilty day? Ask me about mine.

2010-02-23T20:13:00.009-06:00

My students take a sideways glance toward me whenever they are doing something they shouldn't. Now I know how Mr. Salestrom felt patrolling East High when he was the principal of vice. As a former Cornhusker football hero, Mr. Salestrom had hallway cred. His cross-armed presence in the study hall was enough to make most mischievous deviants reconsider their plans.

My father phones me to chat whenever he thinks the aides might contact me. Dad would rather confess to a misdemeanor than be ratted on for a felony by the staff in his skilled care unit.

Cheezits! Howie got me again the moment I walked in the door after work. He was so pleased with himself because he had already had supper and his "afternoon purge". He had told the nurse aide offering to check his ear wax "at no charge" to "get the hell out" so he could have his dump. I said I was sure he was more polite, but he wasn't. Then he went into the litany of his meal menu, and said it was time to hang it up. I said, "Gosh, we can hang up, but I thought you would want to ask about my day."

"Oh. We could do that," Dad says.

I laughed, and proceeded to tell him about the girl barfing ALL OVER THE CLASSROOM, and me bravely leading the other children to the library for an impromptu storytime to prevent copycat chain-reaction vomiting. So, Dad, you don't really want to ask about my day today. But in the future it might be a nice gesture!

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Eggs and eels

2010-01-25T17:51:00.010-06:00

Life is short except when it is so long, and breakfast should be the best meal of the day. When I am old I will especially want exactly what I crave at breakfast. Don't mess with me!

We have just realized that Dad's allergy chart lists eggs, so he hasn't been served an egg--over easy, poached, or scrambled--since at least June. Somehow a very old list of allergies that may or may not cause eczema has limited Dad's breakfast choices. All this time I just thought he had developed a strange fondness for cream of wheat!

You are old, Father William, and you should have eggs cooked to your specifications! But no eel. Please do not balance your breakfast on your nose.

I'd forgotten that Father William is a creation of Lewis Carroll, and went searching for the old guy and his eel in Edward Lear's poetry.

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs.

[Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) First publication date: 1855]

Peter Pan did not grow up. My dad is growing younger by the day. Christopher Robin had so many meals of sweetened condensed milk with Pooh. I plan to read the novel Alice I Have Been, by Melanie Benjamin, maybe even in time for the author's talk at the DMA Late Night on March 19th.

Arts & Letters Live: Melanie Benjamin
Date Friday March 19, 2010
Time 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Dads in time-out/Dads in Dubai

2010-01-23T18:49:00.005-06:00

My dad is in time-out tonight. The aides have suggested he spend cool-down time in the skilled care lounge instead of going back to his room. He needs an attitude adjustment. Like many of my students, Dad will probably forget why he is sitting aside.

The similarities between my preschool students and my father increase. So do similarities in management methods. Allegedly, another old fart tried to cut in line ahead of Dad at suppertime. Dad cussed him out, big time.

When the wheelchair gangs all travel toward the dining room it's like State Fair bumper cars. Then the frustration, impatience, limited empathy and stunted communication abilties kick in. Next thing you know, you've got a rumble between the Jets and the Sharks.

We said, "O.K., no rumpus,
No tricks."
But just in case they jump us,
We're ready to mix
Tonight.

My walking buddy has flown to Florida to meet her dad's flight. He's headed home from Dubai after being taken off his cruise ship with pneumonia. He spent a week in a Dubai cardiac ICU. She doesn't know if she will have to take him straight to the nearest cardiac hospital from the airport. For her

Today the minutes seem like hours.
The hours go so slowly,
And still the sky is light.
Oh moon, grow bright,
And make this endless day endless night

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Penthouse of long-term care

2009-12-19T19:34:00.013-06:00

The caregivers at Dad's assisted living facility are anxious to move him on up to the skilled care center. His outbursts in the dining room are disturbing to the other residents. They would like to move him from his private apartment into a small double-occupancy room, but with more staff available to assist him.

Dad's already on the east side of town and he's mighty fond of pie. Still, it doesn't seem like an improvement in his situation to be irritated by a roommate and pay twice as much each month!

Well we're movin on up, To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

Dad was always pretty enlightened, tolerant, and polite, even before Norman Lear brought Archie Bunker and George Jefferson into our t.v. living rooms. One aspect of Dad's dementia is his use of labels we consider racist. This seems to be common characteristic of dementia in the elderly, but that doesn't make it less uncomfortable for anyone within hearing distance.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Chef Boyardee Had a Great Fall

2009-11-10T19:28:00.006-06:00

The assisted living nurse called the school to reach me about 10:50. Dad had fallen in his apartment. His aide, found him on the floor with a lot of blood at about 9:30. The nurse was summoned immediately. She checked Dad's vitals and cranium. She cleaned the laceration above his left eye which she said was gaping at least 1/4". Dad was sent to the ER for sutures or skin glue. Dad didn't know when or how he fell.

I went into the jam-packed teacher workroom to send my siblings a quick text message about this episode. When I turned around I bumped a shelf. A teensy glass jelly jar with a red checked lid fell off the shelf and shattered all over the workroom. By the time I swept that up, it was time to get ready for lunch. One child brought a Chef Boyardee Noodle-roni cup--the kind where you remove the red plastic cap, remove the metal pop-tab lid, replace the red plastic cap with vent holes, and nuke for 45 seconds.

Plumppf. Not the usual microwave explosion sound, but I went to look through the microwave door. Chef Boyardee had fallen over on his side and was shooting greasy red goo out the vent holes, spraying the microwave walls and down under the rotating glass tray. As I stared, the lid popped off, and this merry carousel started trailing noodle-roni like a parade of grubworms. Some people watch reality tv. I watch reality Boyardee.

I just called Dad and he was speaking clearly. He said he had no aches or pains, but I was keeping him up. He knew that he had nine stitches and will have a black eye. He said everyone took really good care of him.

I didn't ask any questions about what happened, as I didn't want to flip him into anger mode. We agreed that he would try not to have a repeat adventure tomorrow. I can only pray that Chef Boyardee will agree to the same.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Pink Floyd switches from Daylight Savings Time

2009-11-02T18:59:00.004-06:00

Time waits for no man, and it is scary to consider Pink Floyd wearing Depends. Time is preoccupying Howie today. I called to ask him the name for workshop masonite with holes because I was having a brain meltdown. He knew "pegboard" immediately, and I hit my forehead and said, "Duh. Thanks."

Dad was fretting about finding the instructions for his Seiko watch to switch from daylight savings. Had I run into those instructions in the chest of drawers at the house? I told him they were probably in the top middle drawer of that chest of drawers which is actually right there in his Eastmont bedroom. He was too anxious to check that out to continue our conversation.

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)

Ticking away the moments that make up the dull day. Fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way...

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Howard Carter discovers Mr. Coffee

2009-11-01T15:53:00.006-06:00

Mr. Coffee bit the dust today. It's heating component just gave up after what the obituary writers would call a long battle with caffeine. The deterioration was almost imperceptible at first. I figured it had something to do with my hot flashes that the coffee never seemed piping.

I don't build personal relationships with small appliances, nor do I consider them a relic to be preserved. I rarely save their receipts or read their instructions. When they are done for, I throw them in the dumpster without a eulogy, and get a replacement at Walmart.

This was not the way I was raised, and that's okay! Cleaning out my parents' house we found four coffee makers packed in their original boxes with receipts and instructions. Taped on the boxes were notes that said, "broken". Why were my parents saving broken appliances?

Tut, tut. What would the ancient Egyptians do with boxed broken Mr. Coffees? Would they put one at each corner of the sarcophagus along with a shabti servant statue to brew the coffee for waking up in the afterlife? Maybe those tomb inscriptions covering the walls in horror vacui style contain the receipts and instructions for the tomb contents. Down at the bottom there's the legal fine print reminding the deceased that coffee is hot.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

2009-10-23T17:26:00.005-05:00

This has been a crazy week, but the first tests show my dad doesn't have bladder cancer. He definitely has some other problem, although he doesn't understand this. Next week he will have a renal ultrasound. In mid-November he'll have a cystoscopy. That seems to be a day surgery (with anesthesia) poking around in his bladder. His last anesthesia experience sent him into another galaxy for five days, so this is scary. Of course, he spends much of his time in an alternate galaxy now. Please send good vibes and white light!

In my limited experience, having a doctor jam a scope up my deviated septum to view my sinuses is grounds for murder. I'm sure Dad will want to yell, "STEP AWAY FROM THE BLADDER, AND NOBODY GETS HURT."

A couple years ago Dad fell and hit his head. Having a brain scan, lying immobile in the tube with beeping sounds and light flashes gave Dad a vivid, terrible flashback to foxhole experiences in World War II.

I hope he has a little bit of Clint Eastwood in him to get him through that day.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Screenplay of the intermediate place

2009-10-05T19:02:00.010-05:00

Not for the first time, I got off the phone with my father and pushed the VHS cassette of "Amadeus" into the VCR. I'm writing another scene in my imaginary screenplay, and F. Murray Abraham is playing the lead role.

Dad fell again today, but wasn't injured. He "screamed bloody murder for a long time, waking people up but getting no help". Eventually he pushed his call button. Once the aide arrived, the nurse had to be called before Dad could be lifted off the floor. Dad seems to have read the riot act to the poor aide about the sorry excuse for an "intermediate place" he was in. For Dad, assisted living probably feels like an intermediate place, a sort of limbo. I can only begin to imagine Dad's internal discussions about his current abilities and ultimate mortality.

The aide took Dad's temp, blood pressure, and pulse. Dad ranted because his socks weren't even a real pair. One sock was a Gold Toe and the other wasn't.

I started to say that the aides can't move him when he falls so they don't aggravate a break. Dad started swearing at me, that yes he understands this. Eventually he told me he was embarrassed now about his reaction and behavior. He is glad they were taking care of him, but it was pretty exasperating at the time.

I'm in the doghouse. I contacted the church to change Dad's mailing address for the pledge statements. Because of that, I "sicced" the visitation minister on him. The minister visited Dad today. They seem to have conversed about postage rates. I pray it was not like the priest's visits to Salieri in the mad house.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Painful memories

2009-09-06T18:58:00.008-05:00

I just finished shredding all the Medicare and supplemental insurance documents from Mom's illness in 2004 and 2005. I couldn't bear seeing them sit atop the desk in Lincoln, so I brought the stack back to Texas earlier this year. There's really no reason to keep them, so now they are gone.

The shredding reminded me of my intense frustration with the medical profession during Mom's decline. I'm near tears realizing all the invasive procedures she had to endure.

I don't return to this blog very often, as I remember it being about hospitals, doctors, tests, anger, and denial. It's interesting to see that I didn't apply any of those subjects as labels.

I'm still my dad's anchor, and the job hasn't gotten easier. Now being the AnchorWoman includes financial duties and being Dad's advocate in his assisted living facility. We are lucky. He is in a safe, familiar place with good food and caring staff. I am grateful for the evenings when Dad and I have a clear-headed conversation.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

2009-07-09T09:05:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I took the train to CityPlace Station, and a bus to Preston & Beverly, then walked to work at the library. Left the Buick in Plano. I can't write comments on the Morning News blogs supporting mass transit if I don't ride it. Right?

So, when I walk out of the library at 5:40 the sky is a bit cloudy. By the time I'm walking through the shopping area it is windy and sprinkling. If I'd had any sense I would have waited for the bus outside the Tex-Mex restaurant, but I had time to kill, so I walked up McKinney to the next stop. It's raining, but it feels refreshing. At the stop a sprinkler system or storm sewer has gone haywire and is shooting gallons of water into the air in front of some trendy apartments AND fireworks are exploding in a tree. Lots of fireworks whizzing around, and big dogs running like crazy. So I walk on north up McKinney to where I think the next stop must be. And walking, and walking. My cell phone is ringing. It's Dad. I don't try to answer because the hail is marble size and I'm standing under an awning asking patio bar customers where the bus stop is. They look at me like I'm a crazy homeless bag lady, which I am starting to resemble. So I keep walking north figuring I have to find a bus stop or Mockingbird Station eventually. Once you are soaked to the skin it's not bad once the hail stops. Kind of like running through the sprinkler fully-clothed as a kid. Finally find a bus stop and the bus arrives. I leave a puddle on the bus.

At Mockingbird Station I call Dad back while I'm waiting for the train. He's gotten himself into a panic, calling and calling my sister and I at our various numbers and getting no one, no longer knowing who he is dialing. He says he's got a big problem. I figure he's fallen on the floor again and can't remember to push the call button. No, he got a bill and he wants to write a check, but he can't tell me who the bill is from or for how much. He's all into how the bill had been forwarded in the mail. And he's got to pay it by the 25th of something, but he's not sure what.

So I'm standing there dripping wet, talking loudly into my cell phone about Milk of Magnesia and Rx charges to my father who can't hear. Some people are moving away. Others are coming up to me to ask the time. A train goes by. I try to explain to Dad that this is not the best moment for me and I'll call him when I'm dry, but he's too anxious about the bill. Okay, he can write the check and stamp the envelope. Then I realize he will try to get out of his chair to go find the stamps in the drawer. Sigh. I've got most of the bills coming to me or automatically paid, but this one snuck through.

I stand up on the train all the way home, dripping, so I don't leave a wet seat for some unwary passenger.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Making a list and falling down twice

2009-05-20T19:56:00.005-05:00

The weekend my column about fear of falling appeared in the East edition of the Dallas Morning News, my dad fell twice in three days. I spent last night compiling and annotating a list of my father's falls and other incidents over the past two years. Very sad to see the evidence of an average one fall per month, even though most injuries were minor.

The weekend ahead will be difficult as my siblings and I meet with Dad to convince him the time for assisted living has arrived. Dad is frail, depressed, cantankerous, and penny-pinching. He's also a sentimental fool and very funny storyteller. I'm calling up all my memories of that outstanding, ethical, hilarious, inspiring character to form my arguments for assisted living.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Stir fry, bright eye

2009-02-04T20:16:00.004-06:00

Dad picked up his new eyeglasses today. He hasn't been comfortable reading for way too long, despite his cataract surgeries last spring. The eye doctor told him it might take two weeks to adjust to the prescription.

I'm so excited that Dad read the stir fry basics from the Lincoln Journal Star Food section to me over the phone. The information was interesting to him and perhaps useful to me. Best of all, he was enjoying reading again!

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Rolling cookie dough before dawn

2008-12-23T19:16:00.012-06:00

First time I ever set my alarm for 5:45 so I could bake cookies, but it worked. The kitchen was cold, except for the preheating oven. The dough rolled easily without getting sticky.

Dad has requested cut-out sugar cookies like his mother used to make. He wants them thin and brown, the way we both prefer.

I'd hoped to make cookies for Dad when I was in Lincoln over Thanksgiving. Even if I had found Mom's cookie cutters, I could hear her warning the kitchen was too warm to roll cookies.

In December Mom would also be frustrated when the kitchen was too cold to bake houska or cardamon braid, our traditional Christmas breads. The yeast needs a warm winter day to rise -- a steamed kitchen.

Found my cookie cutter collection odd. The butterfly, hearts, squirrel, and roller skate cutters went for clay art projects long ago. The bell and other Christmas forms must have gotten too rusty.

Dad will be getting a package with a few reindeer, helicopters, brontosaurus, and one ghost (of Christmas past). There will be boots and pine trees, and several states of Texas. And there will be lots and lots of owl cookies. He should just pretend they are arctic snowy owls.

My grandma would arrive for the holiday on the Greyhound bus. She would climb down carrying two cardboard shirt boxes tied with string. One would be full of sugar cookies. The other would hold prune and apricot kolaches. I hope my little mailed tub of cookies gives Dad some taste memories.

Packing tape

2008-11-25T20:04:00.007-06:00

I'm hearing a continuous loop of my mom enumerating her instructions for trip preparation. Fritzi seems quite nearby this week. The little gray-green bird has been in the playground shade tree at recess. A pair of hawks sat on the utility pole today. A slate gray junco has been calling attention to itself at my patio feeder. The birds all want to know the next plan for my dad.

Dad is still calling most of his own shots, but he's getting frail. We have to discuss options for assisted living this holiday visit.

Fritzi would have things more planned and organized. She would have a clear solution to Dad's living arrangements. There would be no doubt as to her opinion, but the birds just suggest she's on the premises while I must try to find my own preferences and negotiate an arrangement.

Thanks to new airline restrictions on baggage, I'm breaking Fritzi's first rule of travel:

Always, ALWAYS, take a spare pair of shoes.

Some of Mom's other travel rules follow.

Rule #2:

Have "a little something" in your purse in case you get too hungry. Fritzi's "little something" was usually a butterscotch candy or lemon drop.

Rule #3:

Take salty snacks in case you get queasy. Fritzi never traveled without saltines, Fritos, or pretzels.

Rule #4:

Cover the toilet seat with bathroom tissue before you sit down!

Rule #5:

Loading the car trunk is an an art form best not left to mere mortals.

Food pyramid topples in Red Willow County

2008-08-07T19:40:00.002-05:00

A good story by Prairie Bluestem about her Grandma Violet cooking for farmhands in Gordon, Nebraska, unleashed a vivid childhood memory. My grandmother also cooked for farmhands when my mom was a little girl down by Marion, Nebraska. As far as I know, my mom kept her clothes on, although Genevieve's mom thought clothes should be optional in the hot kitchen.

I always found it difficult to reconcile the grandmother I knew with family stories of her cooking for the farm hands. To me, she lived with my granddad in an hotter-than-hell one-bedroom apartment in McCook, and never did more in the kitchen than set out a "Dutch lunch."

One Sixties summertime visit to McCook our family of five tried to sleep on the fold-out sofa and air mattresses in my grandparents' living room. The sweltering apartment was filled with the smell of overripe cantaloupe and very little sleep.

Last night while I was tossing and turning and worrying that I might have strep throat while hoping it was just a sinus infection, I kept thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't sofa-surfing with cantaloupe in McCook. Some things are worse than strep in August, but not many.

The next day, Grandmother set out the spread of pickled herring, pickled pigs feet, pickled miniature corn, sweet pickles, bread & butter pickles, watermelon pickles, cucumbers and onions in sour cream, sardines in olive oil, sardines in mustard, Club crackers, overripe cantaloupe, salami, summer sausage, cheddar, toothpicks, Fritos, chip dip, and 7-Up. Oh, and some chocolate mints and macaroons for dessert!

Let's call the whole thing off!

2008-08-05T19:19:00.010-05:00

You say TOO ber cles,
I say too BUR kles

We're talking about the bumps on the almost translucent, velvety skin of Mediterranean geckos, a non-native species. The preschoolers are learning about diurnal green anole lizards, and nocturnal geckos. How to pronounce the bumps? Either way, the preschool class got the giggles:

Po TAT to, PO tat oh
TOO ber cles, too BURK les

Let's call the whole thing off!

I'm real self-conscious about em-PHAS-is on the wrong syl-LAH-ble (aggravated in situations compelling my mangled Nebraska pronunciation of foreign composers' names like RICH-erd WAG-ner). I'm accent-challenged, and it's definitely an inherited condition on my mother's side. Nature or nurture.

Back in 1937 when George and Ira Gershwin were struggling with vegetables for the musical, "Shall We Dance?," my mom was learning to read chapter books. A young reader who hasn't heard a word will sound it out and say it in her head. That's why Fritzi believed she was reading stories about De-BOR-ah and AG-knees. Shhh! Don't tell Deborah and Agnes! Fred and Ginger danced their way into the dictionary.

The big controversy growing up was whether those seventy-six sliding instruments were TROM-bones or trom-BONES. I leaned toward TROM-bones because of that capital T that rhymes with P.

My grandmother met Ebenezer Scrooge on a tropical vacation in the BAH-ha-mas, but never met Captain Jack Sparrow in the CAR-ib-be-ann, or the care-uh-BEE-an.

Seventy six trombones led the big parade

With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand

They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos;

the cream of every famous band.

Dreaming of his dad

2008-06-15T16:42:00.007-05:00

Sometime after 4:30 a.m. Howie dreamt he was taking his dad to McDonald's for a filet-o-fish sandwich, a small chocolate milkshake, and maybe some fries. It had been so many years since Adolf appeared in a dream. It got Dad's full attention.

His dad, he commented, had strong opinions about teachers, especially music teachers. No common sense. Completely impractical.

His dad played marbles with him just that once. The day in memory's neon red letters--that one evening outshining everything. Adolf outside in the dust after sunset, shooting marbles with Howard this one time. The dust. Just.

1935. Adolf died when Dad was twelve. Late getting to glee club practice because his father died. The music teacher unsympathetic at this excuse.

They used to walk on down together. Downtown on Saturday night. All the farmers and the townspeople eventually gathering around Anderson's Ford Garage to exchange thoughts about the crops, the prices. Howard with Adolf. Walking the three blocks downtown. The crops and the dust.

Dust and marbles and common sense. We went on over to McDonald's for a filet-o-fish sandwich and a small shake. What did his dad order in the dream? They never got to McDonald's, Dad says.

Does this skin make me look fat?

2008-05-21T19:54:00.001-05:00

The swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on the dill plant would have intrigued Fritzi. They are so strikingly beautiful, and getting fatter by the minute! I'm sure she would agree their graphic colors and patterns would make fabulous swimsuit designs, and never mind the thighs!

Last Sunday's Dillard's swimwear ad looked a bit like a sensuous full-bodied swallowtail caterpillar frolicking in the dill. Frolicking capers inside the adjustable three-panel mirrors in department store fitting rooms were a favorite childhood diversion in the Sixties. It helped pass the time while Mom was trying on girdles, swimsuits, or casual Koret mix-and-match casuals at Miller and Paine or Ben Simons. Mirror amusements were less likely to rile the shopclerks than playing hide'n'seek under the garment display racks.

Realizing the comic strip "Cathy" first appeared in 1976 newspapers, I feel mighty old and irritable today. Maybe my skin is too tight with a full tummy of dill, and it's time to make my chrysalis. Fritzi and I got disgusted with Cathy, her annual swimsuit shopping, her frumpy salesclerk, and her fitting room melt-downs over two decades ago. That was about the same time we both booted Dagwood, Garfield, Ziggy, and Mary Worth off the island, and sent Mark Trail up the creek without his paddle!

If your skin splits, wear it. Molting might be the next major fashion statement. Eat, drink, be merry, and hang your swimsuit out to dry.

Girdle shopping

2008-04-21T22:15:00.001-05:00

Yikes! This two inch insect is between the glass and screen of my sliding patio door. It's doing some moves I haven't seen since about 1962. Yes, this nymph-stage* insect seems to be trying on girdles in the fitting room of the downtown Miller and Paine store.

Flashback to the true full-service department store of the early Sixties before barcodes were invented. Mom is trying on girdles in the fitting room. I wish I could remember if the lingerie department was on the second or the third floor. I'm pushing the stroller back and forth in that small space to keep my little sister from fussing. My lucky brother is at pre-K summer class in the lab school of the dark, old university building, Bancroft Hall.

Mom is struggling into "living" girdles, panty girdles, Formfit, Playtex, and Maidenform girdles in front of the adjustable three-part mirror. Struggling on that muggy June morning for want of talcum powder to ease the squeeze. The saleslady pops in often to check on Mom's progress, and to bring different sizes.

We must get back to campus to collect my brother. No girdle is perfect, but Mom chooses one. The saleslady asks for Mom's charge-a-plate. She sets the credit card between the teeth in the lower jaw of some cross between an alligator and a three-hole punch. After aligning the sales forms and multiple carbon sheets, the saleslady woohvumps the handle of the alligator punch.

Why today's insect is struggling with its orange legs all akimbo is anybody's guess. I haven't worn a girdle since junior high myself when I weighed all of seventy-five pounds. I was skinnier than this insect!

*I'm just guessing it is the nymph stage of an insect. Please comment with any identification suggestions!

"Norton is playing in the snow"

2008-03-08T19:25:00.007-06:00

The class rabbit was absent Friday, playing hookie. Norton stayed at the lead teacher's house to drink hot cocoa with mini-marshmallows. He probably watched "Oprah" and a few soaps when he wasn't outside rolling snowballs and making angel bunnies.

We needed a sign on the rabbit's cage to let the children know that Norton would be absent for the day. Norton has an excellent attendance record. He is never tardy. This was going to be a strange day. The first student to arrive drew an imaginative picture of a rabbit in the snow to tape on the cage.

What a weird week! Two separate snowstorms in North Texas in one week is about as likely as hell freezing over. I'm sure this was a commentary on our primary election options. I wouldn't vote for ____ even if hell froze over.... Fill in the blank/multiple choice! E. None of the above.

A worried parent asked in hushed tones if our rabbit had gone to the big cosmic none of the above. "Is Norton playing in the snow at the end of the white light tunnel?" Absolutely not. The rabbit is just taking a mental health day.

A dear friend studies the local obituaries as a comparative literature exercise. I glance over those obits a couple times a week, as I am not a serious scholar of the genre. Still, I'm impressed with the twists of words our culture uses to euphemize death.

So if you happen to read on that local news back page about someone who has "gone out to play with the rabbit in the snow", just thank me that this obit wasn't "after a long courageous battle".

I'm hoping my sons will remember to write that I "slid on down that long, long Eternal Hill on my Celestial Flexible Flyer". And I sure hope I meet Norton inside the Pearly Gates with mugs of melty marshmallows.

My morning visitor

2008-01-21T13:52:00.000-06:00

Junco

2008-01-21T08:22:00.000-06:00

This morning there's a little junco sitting on my patio fence. I've been sitting very still to enjoy it, and not rushing away to find my camera.

Juncos are perfect tiny winter birds. They seem to be wearing black hooded parkas over their white tummies. Mother loved juncos, and we marveled often about how such tiny creatures were equipped to survive a harsh Nebraska January.

After Fritzi passed away, I brought a load of her clothes back to Texas. Emptying her closets had to be done, partly as a physical outlet for our grief. Some items were too nice or new to go to Goodwill. Trying on coats, I was surprised to find that some fit me. In my mind at least, Fritzi and I were never the same size.

It was a long time before I was comfortable wearing any of the clothes, although I enjoyed wearing certain pieces of her jewelry. Some things I realized I could never wear, but I saved Fritzi's junco parka. It is black and hooded, and longer than most, a very sensible coat for watching birds in winter. It makes me happy to wear it.

Click here for a nice Northern junco photo.

Entangled parade balloons

2007-10-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

Called Dad at 5:35 this evening, but he was anxious to cut the visit short. He needed to switch from Lou Dobbs on CNN to a local station for the weather report. I had interrupted one of his tethers.

If we are all inflated balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (and I have acquired the figure over the years), then we all need tethers--those lines that keep us from floating away into the stratosphere or crashing down in a New Jersey landfill. We all need handlers to hold the tethers firm however strong the wind. Talking to Dad, the first parade balloon that comes to mind is Underdog. The Underdog balloon first appeared in the Macy's parade in 1965.

Dad is an Underdog. He has surpassed the odds. It has been nearly three years since my mother passed away. "Conjugal bereavement" is a huge stressor related to mortality risk for men. Depression related to grief impacts the immune system. The stress of caring for my mother during her six month illness also took a toll on Dad, emotionally and physically.

Dad broke the same hip twice in a six month period, but is able to live in his home and get around well with a walker. He has aides that come to the house everyday. The homemaker aide who comes in three mornings a week is one of the strongest tethers for his Underdog balloon. This incredibly patient and competent young woman is a friendly anchor for Dad. She also makes it possible for me to keep my Bullwinkle balloon tethered several states away. If my dad is losing helium or whipping around street lights and spectators, I can't do my job or keep my own balloon afloat with its marching band and celebrity commentator.

Weather, news, and sports are vital anchors for Dad. He needs his golf and baseball on t.v. The Weather Channel with "locals on the eights", and the Lincoln station weather reports keep him looking forward, no matter how dorky or annoying the forecaster. I'm not sure how to categorize the news. Mostly, the news keeps Dad angry and/or empathetic. He shouts at the war reports. "Bush lied. They died!" Amen. We should all be shouting. Dad gets tearful about car crashes, calamities, catastrophes, and climate change. We should all be less jaded.

Dad isn't as interested in the activities of his descendants as he once was. He doesn't hear very well and his personal hurdles take up most of his energy. Family is still a tether.

Dad's blessed to live in a tree-shaded neighborhood made up of young families, long-time elderly homeowners, and everybody in between. To have been part of that community for nearly fifty years is a powerful pull, although Dad misses those years not so far back when he and Mom were the official neighborhood grandparents.

Food fills us up, but it also holds us to this daily life, and fuels our spirit. Meals, foods, scents, and tastes, past and planned, are the warp and weft that connect us to life's parade route. The bands are playing. I see the tassels on the drum majorette's white boots. We march forward toward the piece of peach pie, the Healthy Choice microwave dinner, the Stouffer's stuffed green pepper, or the expertly-toasted English muffin.

My evening phone calls and letters are another Earth-to-Howie:Howie-to-Earth (come in, Howie) connection. Sometimes, I need to check the strength of my own balloon tethers, and make sure my handlers know their ropes. My Bullwinkle balloon occasionally gets boffled-about by the winds whipping around street corners between skyscrapers. My over-active mama mode nags the balloon handlers to wear their mittens and gloves.

What keeps me floating along the parade route:

Family--My wonderful sons and Dad
Writing--Blogging and letters
Teaching--Wise coworkers and entertaining kids
Curiosity, wonder, learning--Opera, spiders, art, genealogy, ......

Curious George had an adventure with parade balloons. If you are a curious little monkey, and you have the Man with the Yellow Hat for a friend, life is full of fascinating knots to untangle.

Lullaby of Birdland

2007-08-30T07:03:00.000-05:00

Hummingbirds limit productivity. They prevent multi-tasking. When hummingbirds visit my cannas and feeder, I can't seem to do anything but watch in amazement.

An egret flies over just when the sky is at maximum Maxfield Parish. It seems to have captured all of the late sunlight, glowing intense white against the pink and blue.

Just before dark, my little wren puts in an appearance, hopping along the crossbar of the fence, and showing off its white eye liner. Out comes the bird book to compare Carolina wrens and Bewick's wrens again.

Limiting productivity enhances restorative relaxation! A song is in my head, though.

Oh, lullaby of birdland
That's what I always hear,
When you sigh,
Never in my wordland could there be ways to reveal
in a phrase how I feel

Have you ever heard two turtle doves
Bill and coo,
when they love?
That's the kind of magic music we make with our lips
When we kiss

And there's a weepy old willow
He really knows how to cry,
That's how I'd cry in my pillow
If you should tell me
farewell and goodbye

Lullaby of birdland
whisper low
Kiss me sweet,
and we'll go
Flying high in birdland,
high in the sky up above
All because were in love

Here are some links to watch and listen to George Shearing, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEo6zQAxUl0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzsEYek8Cws&mode=related&search=

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Ella-Fitzgerald-Millennium-Collection/dp/B000084TSK © 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Brown and white wren

2007-08-10T20:42:00.000-05:00

Wren leaps in stage right
Over storage shed
& patio umbrella
To land on the fence rail
/flick tail/perpendicular/
Just as the last orange moment
Turns crayon Prussian blue
/90 degrees/pivot/flick tail/
Did you notice me?
Did you notice yet?
Next hop south
Right out of sight hop
& brown hot night
/Pivot tail/
Making sure you caught the runway model
In her vintage spectator shoes
To write home about it

Wren Sent

2007-07-31T21:26:00.000-05:00

Shortly after I spilled my juice, I got a call from a nurse sitting with my dad. It was very embarrassing to spill my juice at lunchtime in front of all the preschoolers, but there was no use crying over it. The nurse was called by Dad's housekeeper when she couldn't get into his house this morning. Dad was extremely weak. He's in the hospital now, apparently with the beginnings of pneumonia. I'm extremely grateful that my brother could get there quickly to be with him and keep tabs on Dad's clarity of thought.

This evening amidst the flurry of phone calls, I kept seeing bird movements from the corner of my eye. This bird really wanted to call attention to itself, walking along the crosspiece of the fence and making Olympic hop-skip-jumps. It's vertical tail let me know this was an unusual visitor. I don't know if I've ever had a wren on my little condo patio. You might identify it as a Bewick's wren, and that would be correct. I know it was a message from my mom letting me know whatever happens with Dad will be good. This odd hopping visitor brought me comfort, courage, and permission to be a little bit weepy.

Betsy McCall paper dolls

2007-07-29T19:00:00.000-05:00

Mom subscribed to McCall's Magazine for many years, and I looked forward to the arrival of each new issue in hopes of finding a new Betsy McCall paper doll and story. Mom sewed nearly all our dresses and playclothes, using McCall's, Butterick, and Simplicity patterns. On a few occasions she made a dress just like Betsy's paper dress. It was great when Mom decided quickly on a Betsy McCall dress pattern. We spent so many, many, many hours of childhood seated at the pattern book tables in fabric departments agonizing over selections.

Mom made a brown dress for me just like Betsy's with the button-on yoke from McCall's September 1962 issue. Mom made it again in a royal blue border print with a white button-on yoke. 1962 was a wonderful year. I adored my second grade teacher, Mrs. Sandra "Cotton" Meier with her prematurely white hair. She encouraged me to write poems and stories (about three sentences long on lined newsprint paper) and to illustrate them with crayon drawings. My hair was cut shorter than Betsy's, and it was the last year I really liked my appearance for a long time.

Thanks so much to the Betsy McCall Paper Dolls web page for a lovely trip down memory lane.

Cantaloupe 1971

2007-07-14T17:32:00.000-05:00

I'm allergic to pollens of the ragweed botanical family. Bananas and chamomile tea really set me off. I never know if cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, or sunflowers will send me sneezing. I hope not, because I want to know what is different about a Dulcinea cantaloupe.

Kroger had Dulcinea cantaloupe on sale, so I got one. Dulcinea is the name of Don Quixote's envisioned female perfection. Funny that buying a cantaloupe with a brand sticker can send me on a memory trip to 1971.

Fritzi and I had planned to attend the Nebraska Repertory's "Man of La Mancha" together that summer, but she had to have "some female surgery". As a young teen, I had only the vaguest uncomfortable inklings of the complexities of female plumbing. These days my contemporaries have ongoing story sagas with their "female plumbing". Cantaloupe is a memorable scent. So is the smell of the House of Bauer's Bavarian Mints that I took my mom in the hospital.

Dulcinea... Dulcinea... I see heaven when I see thee, Dulcinea, And thy name is like a prayer An angel whispers... Dulcinea... Dulcinea!

PADRE: To each his Dulcinea
That he alone can name...
To each a secret hiding place
Where he can find the haunting face
To light his secret flame.
For with his Dulcinea
Beside him so to stand,
A man can do quite anything,
Outfly the bird upon the wing,
Hold moonlight in his hand.
Yet if you build your life on dreams
It's prudent to recall,
A man with moonlight in his hand
Has nothing there at all.
There is no Dulcinea,
She's made of flame and air,
And yet how lovely life would seem
If ev'ry man could weave a dream
To keep him from despair.
To each his Dulcinea...
Though she's naught but flame and air!

My students are unaware of windmills, and as unlikely to tilt at them as they are to dial a rotary phone. A Bauer's Bavarian mint would taste great right now.

Mom sewed this dress for me that summer.

Peanut butter

2007-07-08T19:50:00.000-05:00

Dad and I finally got around to having peanut butter and bacon sandwiches with lettuce and Miracle Whip on whole wheat toast this week. "This is for Mom," I said, and he agreed. The taste and texture sensations were even better than I had remembered.

Roses en route

2007-06-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

Don't know why I decided to drive north up US highway 75 instead of I-35. Backward justification made me search out road construction advice to avoid the Ardmore section of I-35. My first hint at the real reason came when I picked up a tourist ad for the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa at a gas station.

Contemplating the Gilcrease set me to pondering a detour to Claremore to visit Will Rogers' home. Fritzi would have had this drive planned and researched. I was just flying by the seat of my capri pants with color-coordinated sandals.

Crossing the river I spotted an exit NOW sign for the Philbrook Art Museum, and took it. Mom had enjoyed a visit to the Philbrook collection in the opulent estate of oil baron Waite Phillips. Still, she would not have advised crossing two lanes so quickly, even under sparse traffic conditions.

Nature and nurture wholloped me with Fritzi's perfectionistic over-packing and over-planning tendencies, right down to the barf bags and accordian-folded plastic rain bonnets that fit into your purse. My mom's best moments were when she got so caught up in her enthusiasm for art museums, architecture, gardens, and golf tournaments it balanced out her anxieties. Those were some really outstanding vacation experiences for everyone along for the ride.

These roses were almost "glowing in the dark" on an overcast noontime in the formal Philbrook garden:

After this good month of rain and a quick pruning, Fritzi's long-suffering rosebushes had nice flowers. Mom rarely had time or inclination for gardening. The rosebushes baked on the south side of the house by the old television antenna, barely daring to hope someone would rip away the bindweed and spurge. Still, Mom loved floating pretty, fragrant roses in bud bowls on the card tables for bridge club.

Oh! I once heard a poem that goes:
"A rose is a rose is a rose"
Well I don't agree,
Take it from me,
There's one rose sweeter than any that grows!
That's my Rosie
Life is one sweet beautiful song to me.

It's good to take life's spur-of-the-moment side-trips. It doesn't hurt to recast your parents as Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh, either!

Owly wake-up call

2007-04-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

Garrison Keillor was telling his weekend tale of Wobegon this morning as I was driving along Arapaho. It was a pretty good tale until one of his characters became "owly". Slam me back to 1960! Garrison rambled on without me. There I was, left on a sidetrack.

Mom used to say we were "being owly", but I haven't heard the expression since kindergarten. "Crabby" is the sort of grumpiness children develop when they need a nap. To me, "owly" is the type of grumpiness children exhibit when they have been so, so sound asleep under their special blankie that they resist adult efforts to get them awake and moving in the adult's required direction.

Hearing "owly" didn't make a letter-spelled mental word-recognition. It made a strange sound like a stylus scratching a 78 rpm record combined with the blank air just before the local radio station's test of the emergency broadcast system. This was only a test. Owly is when you are being rushed, your shoes are on the wrong feet, your fuzzy tights are riding really low in the saddle, and your room smells like the first furnace run of the chilly, wet autumn.

How is "owly" spelled? Does it have something to do with birds, or is it a more preliterate stomach growl of a child sent to fetch something from a Bohemian root cellar?

I blink my eyes, and swivel my head almost 360 degrees. My limbs are wrapped tight by a boa constrictor. Still, it's satisfying to have been plucked from throwing wooden building blocks and plunked into bed on account of crabbiness, having put up a good fight against the tyranny of naptime, but ultimately waking up more irritable than before.

Don't want to make Colorforms designs on the cold living room windows. Don't want to be zipped in a jacket for a quick trip to the Hinky Dinky, a visit to the pediatrician, or a sibling's dance lesson carpool. Just want to snuggle back down into the nest of acrid-smelling warm feathers and furless stuffed animals.

"Owly" is exactly right. I will look at the little preschoolers struggling to wake up with a wiser, softer lens.

I'm not the only word junkie out there trying to find out about "owly". Maybe Garrison Keillor will post a comment and let us all know more about this rare word--after he wakes up from naptime!

Mantle disornamented

2006-12-30T20:51:00.000-06:00

"Took down Christmas" this afternoon. It's a strange expression meaning the packing away of Christmas decorations for another year, but it sounds like a wrestling term. Indeed, I am struggling with emotions as this year ends. Putting away the ornaments I had set on the fireplace mantle really got me weepy.

With three full-grown sons and their friends hanging out in the condo living room watching bowl games, we need the space taken by the Christmas tree. The tree ornaments are such a powerful connection to Fritzi that it's tough to put them away for another year. It's good to know that unpacking each decoration next December will be like opening the windows on an Advent calendar to find the joy and generosity of the Christmas season.

For twenty-five years, or basically all my adult life, my mother and I shared a joy of creating or finding perfect ornaments to remember the year. Each ornament I wrap and pack away is a combination of holiday cheer, charm bracelet, time capsule, and childhood scrapbook. We have ornaments to remember teddy bears, windmills, charcoal grills, ice-skating, school bus rides, fishing trips, firetrucks, 10K races, and aquarium fishes. Many remind me of the intense and loving involvement my mother had with her little grandsons, and her appreciation of the fine young men they became.

Someday these sons will create new homes and families. I will say a sad farewell to the ornaments Fritzi chose to acknowledge each boy's accomplishments when they migrate from our Christmas tree to theirs. I pray that each son will choose a partner who appreciates such simple and meaningful family traditions. I hope each of Fritzi's grandsons will feel her love and pride in them every Christmas.

Old rose ramblings

2006-12-25T19:17:00.000-06:00

I wore an "old rose" blouse today. Got it on sale, of course. It has sewn-in darts, woven stripes, and machine-embroidered embellishments. Fritzi would have approved, although she could have sewn a better-fitting one.

Chocolate brown has returned to the little girl fashion scene. My little students are wearing brown with pink, turquoise, or lime green, and it fills me with an irrational hope for the future. The color combo and the floral print corduroy tug deep in my core to a basic sense memory of what it is to be a little daughter safe, cherished, and nurtured.

When my sons were small I read a story written by Fred Rogers, yes, Mr. Rogers, about how our feeling of home and safety is connected with our earliest memories of colors, patterns, sounds, and smells. I've never been able to find the story again. It may be that it is more powerful to me because I can't find it, and therefore keep looking! The story told of a young woman who was seeking a Persian rug for her home. As a very young child she had moved often to places all over the world, but her parents had always taken one rug to each new location. The young woman was searching for a rug exactly like the one she had learned to crawl on as an infant, but she didn't know it. That pattern would connect with her earliest remembered experience of "home".

The annual blouse sale at the Miller & Paine Department Store Budget Shop on the lower level of Gateway Mall in Lincoln, Nebraska, just down the stairs from Kresge's, was a crazy event in the late Sixties. Women would stand in line for the chance to paw through the racks and get into the fitting rooms. The Budget Store was also the place to get day-old Miller & Paine bakery bread, cinnamon rolls, and crumb cookies, and I can smell each of them just remembering! I can also smell the tired linoleum floor tiles and a hint of sizing. The stairwell from Kresge's down to the Budget Store smelled of ancient popcorn, plastic floral wreaths, dirty snow, and parakeet cages.

Going with Fritzi to the blouse sale was an acknowledgment that I was becoming a young woman, which was very scary, uncharted territory. Fritzi wanted me to have new clothes for ninth grade. The blouses I chose would inspire her fabric choices and sewing efforts to create outfits. She would even knit a coordinating sweater vest. It was a heavy burden, given my mother's perfectionism. I knew these choices allowed no middle ground, no enjoyment of the shopping experience for its own sake. This was Red Rover all over again.

Still, I recall each of the six blouses as if the sale were yesterday. The "old rose" blouse was a simple short sleeve blouse with the sleeves folded up. I had never heard the phrase "old rose" before I went into the fitting room, and I was sure I would look like an elderly spinster great aunt. Instead, the color is one of the most flattering for my hair and skin.

My next choice was a delicate, textured pattern of pale yellow and sage green vines on an ecru background of wide seersucker with very full sleeves. Fritzi chose a sage green wool remnant to make a simple button-front jumper with brushed silver buttons. The wool made me itch, but I will keep choosing sage and silver combinations as long as I live.

The third blouse was white with tiny woven stripes of embroidered blue, pink, and yellow flowers. The leaves were pale green, so the blouse also went with the jumper. Thirty-eight years later, I seek out the embroidered fashions. Fritzi also made royal blue culottes to go with the blouse, and I was grateful they weren't wool.

I wore the olive green shirt with the exaggerated cuffs and collar for my ninth grade photo. I tied a paisley scarf knotted like a necktie, and wished I looked more like a Mary Quant/Jean Shrimpton /Twiggy-esque model in my Yardley white lipgloss. There was only so much Edholm and Blomgren Photographers could do to make me look better! The photo shows a ninth-grader far more childlike and naive than most of my current third grade students.

The fifth shirt was a simple warm light blue. The color was so satisfying with the chocolate brown skirt and the brown and white groovy mod scarf around the neck! I was definitely channeling Petula Clark here, and not sleeping on the subway!

In those days I felt the most glamorous in the button-down-the-back peach blouse with the extravagant ruffled neck that made me look like a tropical fruit-flavored signer of the Declaration of Independence. Fritzi created a peachy tweed outfit of pantskirt and long vest with covered buttons. Then she knit a coral sweater vest, and found matching coral tights. How amazing that we dressed so nicely just to crank the journalism class mimeograph machine!

That blouse sale in my Wonder Years still tints my color choices. On some deep level it feels like home, both safe and with psychic baggage.

Dewey, Dick, detectives, and delicacies

2006-12-18T08:23:00.000-06:00

My little students often ask if the picture books I read in class are "stories or real?" What a complicated process it must be for children to sort out the fiction and non-fiction in all the mediums that bombard them from the moment they wake up until they finally manage to fall asleep at night. That's when dreams and nightmares add to their confusion.

As I read aloud, I sometimes ask, "Dzthat ever happen to you?," at the oddest parts of the story. "Does your daddy do that?," I ask with exaggerated skeptical eyebrows. I love the kids who know I'm playing when I ask, "Did you ever drive a bulldozer?" They play back by saying yes and telling me what color hardhat they wore at the excavation site. The twinkle in their eye lets me know they understand the making of a story. These kids are ready to study the Dewey decimal juvenile non-fiction books to fuel their own creative play and story-making. The more you know about real aircraft carriers, the more satisfying your imaginative play becomes.

As adults and registered voters we still watch, read, and listen to news and wonder if it's a "story or real?" Chew on that for a moment, please. Does Dick Cheney eat peanut butter and pickle sandwiches in his undisclosed location? If we knew, he might seem closer to human. Sue Grafton's fictional alphabetized sleuth, Kinsey Milhone, eats PB and pickle sandwiches. Not my personal choice, but the detail makes Kinsey believable.

Janet Evanovitch's numerical New Jersey bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, never gets zits. The girl eats the most dreadful, greasy fast food in paperback after paperback, and can still zip her jeans. Would I confuse these mysteries with non-fiction? Of course not. This is clearly as fictional as Bush's "Mission Accomplished."

Are my posts "stories or real?" Let's say they are as real as Kraft Miracle Whip is to mayonnaise. The details come from the Dewey decimal section, but the words might spring from Once-upon-a-time-Time. The recipes come from the middle drawer next to the twist-ties for Baggies and the hamburger patty-maker.

Fritzi served an occasional lunch of creamy peanut butter and bacon on toast with Miracle Whip and iceberg lettuce, Weavers potato chips, and cold skim milk. When Steve Blow wrote about family food idiosyncrasies, I related. I wanted him to try putting lettuce in his PB and mayo sandwiches. It was fun to remember Mom fixing sandwiches in the kitchen on a cold Saturday.

So many people wrote Steve Blow about peanut butter sandwiches, that he offered a second column on the subject:

PB and pickles? I'll take your word for it
06:42 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 6, 2006
I feel a little bit like a culinary Indiana Jones. I have stumbled upon a lost civilization. It's the secret society of peanut butter and mayonnaise eaters. A month or so ago, I wrote about families and their peculiar food traditions. And for the most part, I talked about my family's longtime love for avocado toast. Although I never met a single person who knew about avocado toast, I felt I would surely hear from many others who know what rapture a ripe, mashed avocado is on warm buttered toast.

But I hardly heard from any other devotees of that dish. Instead, the outpouring of enthusiastic response came to my mention of a concoction that I thought surely my father had invented – peanut-butter-and-mayonnaise sandwiches. They sound so vile that I was a little bit embarrassed to even mention them. But I got e-mails by the hundreds from people who thought they were alone in the world with their love for PB&M sandwiches... I do need to make a correction. I said mayonnaise in that earlier column. But when Southern boys say "mayonnaise," they really mean Miracle Whip. Strictly speaking, those were PB&MW sandwiches my dad taught me to eat. But I heard repeatedly from readers that my peanut-butter-and-mayonnaise sandwiches are missing the crowning glory – cold, crisp lettuce. Apparently the crunch factor sends the sandwiches into taste heaven.

Now that my guys have returned for the holidays, I want to share this concoction with them. I get hungry for these peanut butter sandwiches at least once every winter, but the guys' dad didn't encourage my sharing this delicacy. His opinion was along the line of, "it'll be a cold day in Hell when I swallow that." That's the same opinion I have whenever Dick Cheney's lips move.

I'm going to serve a toaster oven open-face sandwich Steve Blow would like--mashed avocado seasoned with garlic, then slices of tomato,topped with a mound of grated monterey jack cheese and sprinkled with paprika. It's especially good if you have been outside shoveling snow, but the weather isn't cooperating there. It's so warm in Dallas we are tempted to turn on the air-conditioner! And that's the Dewey decimal truth.

Silver and stainless

2006-08-19T19:01:00.000-05:00

The Dallas Museum of Art's exhibit, Modernism in American Silver, running June 18 – September 24, 2006, leaves me far colder than a long handled spoon in a tall glass of iced sweet tea. A few bowls in natural, asymmetrical forms please me, along with a simple glass bowl on a silver base creating geometric shadows and rainbows. The highpoint of the exhibit it the "Celestial centerpiece" with its beautiful, thin tapers and sapphire dandelion fluff. This centerpiece was designed for an exhibit at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

The dandelion fluff on the Dallas skyline is the Reunion Tower. I enjoyed looking at all the lighted buildings of downtown Dallas during last evening's Late Night at the Dallas Museum of Art. The DMA's website rarely works, so I won't add it here. Late Night is a monthly event sponsored by Starbucks with activities and music for all ages on a theme connected to one of the current exhibitions. Last evening's theme was the World's Fair.

The idea of a World's Fair was confusing stuff to a second grader in the years of the Mercury manned suborbital missions. What was that space needle? Did it give shots? The monorail was more kid friendly. It was the transportation of the Future! All I knew, I probably learned from My Weekly Reader!

My tastes in silver, stainless, and other tableware was already being formed in 1962. The "modernism" silver pieces at the DMA do not have the simple, clean, elegant shapes of the stainless serving dishes and trays my mother preferred. Her stainless is timeless, and much respected today. The silver of Gorham and Reed and Barton on display look quite ridiculous, like someone trying to hard to be cubist or Jetson space age.

This Elvis movie was being projected on the Ross Street plaza wall outside the museum. Silly stuff with Elvis taking a little girl to the fair and playing ukelele. The sort of stuff your mother, or at least my mother, warned me never to do. (I probably didn't need a warning about ukeleles, just strangers at fairs.)

So many World's Fair predictions for the future never materialized. I'm going to have to track down a recording of the Firesign Theatre's "I Think We're All Bozos On this Bus" to hear the robotic President at the Future Fair. Just remember, "the Future's not here yet!"

Perfectionism

2006-07-27T20:26:00.000-05:00

There's a fine line between careful attention to detail and paralyzing perfectionism. I grew up in a family teetering a bit over that line. I'm grateful that I learned the maxim, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right," at a very young age. I strive to do my job and conduct my life by that motto. I'm equally grateful that I learned the expression, "It will never be seen from a galloping horse," when I was a young, frazzled mother.

Everybody else is galloping through their own lives giving scarcely a glance back over their shoulders at my efforts. In my mind, they are galloping on beautiful dark horses along the top of the Great Wall of China, if not along the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. Don't quite know why they are in China, but they must be holding back the fourfold psychic invaders of Disorder, Depression, Diarrhea, and Dr. Pepper.

My mom taught me every way she could to do every task of life to perfection so that she and I could never be judged inadequate. She taught me to match plaids and sew them together with microscopic perfection. The cost in time and anxiety was great, but the fear of being judged lacking was greater.

It was such a revelation to learn that everyone else was galloping along the Great Wall of China on their own plaid-matching missions. Even if the gallopers gave a diddly-do about my plaid matches, they were moving far too fast to see my results. I was the only person giving a diddly-do about my personal plaids! Most of my life was being marked Pass/Fail based solely on my attendance, and next to none of it was being marked in permanent Sharpie on my Permanent Record.

I am reminded of a mind-boggling green plaid double-knit outfit my mom sewed for me to wear to high school awards ceremonies--battle jacket and wide pants with giant cuffs. It was perfect, but I was still a smart and nearly invisible nerd. Everyone was silently evaluating me, I was sure.

Although I still don't know what I want to be if I grow up, I have gravitated to people and jobs requiring attention to detail mixed with extreme perfectionism. This is on my mind because today's papier mache project was a major league disaster. The powdered glue/goop/slime didn't set up when I mixed it, and the paper slid off the balloon forms. Sloppy globs of newspaper slid to the floor. It was a bit like walking through the stable! Don't step on that road apple!

Somedays you're Best of Show. Somedays it's good to know that nobody else really notices.

The early bird gets the perm

2006-06-17T17:11:00.000-05:00

I'm still surprised when the stylist twirls my chair around to the mirror, and I see my mom's reflection. How'd she get here? For over forty years my reflection was more like my dad's face shape and coloring.

I like having a perm, but it's always pretty scary when the stylist applies the finishing touches with blow-dryer, curling iron, and dreaded hairspray. I've left salons with hairdos stiff enough to protect an NFL player crashing his motorcycle without a helmet. That's not the real me. I'm strictly a wash, scrunch, and go person.

Today I lucked out. My post-appointment look doesn't make me cringe. I bet Fritzi would have been pleased to leave the beauty shop with this hairstyle. So there you have it! Being fifty-one means never having to say you're sorry to have your mother's hair! What happened to those flowers and San Francisco? What do you mean the Summer of Love was nearly forty years ago?!

The good news is it's a good day for watching hummingbirds going crazy around the blooming cannas on the patio. Wish Fritzi, Petula Clark, and Georgy Girl could join me.

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there
--Lyrics by John Phillips

Yes, it's a good day for singing a song,
and it's a good day for moving along;
Yes, it's a good day, how could anything go wrong,
A good day from morning' till night
--Lyrics by Peggy Lee

So you can color my world with sunshine yellow each day
Oh you can color my world with happiness all the way
Just take the green from the grass and the blue from the sky up above
And if you color my world, just paint it with your love
Just color my world--(Tony Hatch/Jackie Trent)

Patio dining for a limited time only

2006-05-30T17:45:00.000-05:00

Over the Memorial Day weekend the butterfly plant shot up over a foot, and then bloomed. The plant is next to the little table with the umbrella on my condo patio. A vivid red cardinal flew in, and claimed the table for his holiday picnic and concert. I'm the lucky one who enjoyed the dinner theater.

The blooms of the butterfly plant were at exactly beak level. The cardinal would bite off a bloom, and then promenade in a circle around the umbrella pole. It would sing a little, then march back for another bite looking totally smug. It repeated the show several circuits.

The plant grew another inch today. The cardinal better hurry back. By tomorrow he won't be able to reach his meal. I imagine him with the confusion of a drunk trying to negotiate a barstool. Maybe I should put out a booster seat for him.

In one of my all-time favorite books from childhood, The Twenty-One Balloons, there are dining tables and stools that hydraulically rise from the floor of the dining hall like mushrooms. After a meal, they lower back to floor level so all clean-up can be done with a mop, to the best of my childhood memory. This week's Indonesian earthquake brings that wonderful 1948 Newbery winning book to mind because the fictional dining hall is on the island of Krakatoa:

In this story, a sixty-six-year-old retired arithmetic teacher decides to take a hot-air balloon trip around the world in an effort to get away from everyone. Halfway around the globe, however, he becomes stranded on a volcanic island that is about to experience a massive eruption. The fantasy of The Twenty-One Balloons is built around an actual historic event—the massive volcanic eruption that destroyed the Pacific island of Krakatoa in 1883. But there the connection with history ends. The Professor discovers that the inhabitants of the island have established a unique, Utopian...

I thank enotes for refreshing my memory.

"There are so many greens if you are paying attention," I tell my students often. This week my patio is telling me there are so many reds in nature it takes a cookbook or a lipstick color chart to describe them all. There's a red geranium just like my grandma used to have on her porch. The coleus is that intense unnatural magenta of raspberry Jello. The mimosa tree behind the fence has fluffy blooms of a warm watermelon. The mums are in the colors of barbecue sauce, Gallo Hearty Burgundy, and a thick Tbone ready for the grill. There are a few volunteer strawberries next to the gate. The cannas remind me of boiled shrimp and lobster, but the miniature roses are Snow White's lips!

No wonder the cardinal feels right at home.

Charlotte Spivack. "The Twenty-One Balloons: Overview." Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Ed. Kirk H. Beetz. Vol. 4. Beacham-Gale, 1990. eNotes.com. January 2005. 30 May 2006.

Window boxes

2006-05-26T20:45:00.000-05:00

Breathing. It's all about breathing. My dad sent me a birthday card last month with words of wisdom from the great guru on the mountaintop. The key to a long life, according to the guru, is to keep breathing. The key to living through loss and grief is the same. So is the key to birthin' babies, enjoying symphonies, waiting for the next call of a hidden owl, and, I swear, the only way to match plaids perfectly when cutting fabric for a garment. Keep breathing.

Butterfly McQueen has been voicing my thoughts for a year and a quarter--"I don't know nuthin' 'bout grieving my mama." Most of the time I needed a slap to the cheek and a direct order to fetch hot water. Tell me what short steps to take on this new journey.

My parents took me to see the rerelease of "Gone With the Wind" at the Cooper Theater on Lincoln's O Street in 1967. It was an official acknowledgement that I was a Big Girl Now, and able to behave myself at a grown-up movie and handle the mature content. I'm thankful my parents kept wise control over my viewing, although I resented it at the time. I wish my students would all have such wise parents.

Fritzi has been a presence at several occasions in the last couple weeks. I could have sworn she was sitting with us around the table at the Albuquerque Outback restaurant two weeks ago to this minute. Her enjoyment of well-behaved young people sharing a delicious meal encircled us as much as the ABQ sunset.

This morning an unidentified owl called about eight times close to my condo. The calls were several minutes apart, in a range similar to a mourning dove's, and about eight notes in length. I had binoculars, but I was in my PJs, and couldn't venture too far out into the parking lot. Remembering Fritzi's excitement when owls were nesting in the maple tree by her patio swept me into the moment, even if I never saw the owl! It was a good day for birds as a cardinal sang alleluia by the front door after the lawn maintenance workers pruned, mowed, and edged.

Living with my mother was not without aggravations. She was a perfectionist extraordinaire. Her standards and expectations were non-negotiable, and controlled her own choices most of all. Last week my sons and I picked out a sofa at IKEA in under an hour. It isn't a perfect sofa, but it is comfortable, affordable, and the covers are washable. Plus, the sofa doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to last for the next century. Fritzi purchased three sofas in her entire adult life. I was along for the ride on two of those shopping missions (1966 and 1981+ or minus a year), so I know what it means to evaluate sofas for perfection. Bert Parks could not sing about a vision of loveliness so carefully selected. Keep breathing.

I'm more receptive to Fritzi's occasional presence and everyday influence in my life. I'm able to enjoy memories that I would have blocked a year ago. I'm able to channel some of this into my art.

One of the most profound experiences in the time after Fritzi's death was opening her box of costume jewelry with my sister and reminiscing about the pins and earrings. This sense of memory and surprise, compartment and opening, sharing and marvel showed up in my work in unpremeditated fashion.

Oak Tree Gang

2006-05-25T21:20:00.000-05:00

Gil Morgan shot a 5-under 66 today to grab the lead after the first round of the 67th Senior PGA Championship at Oak Tree Club in Edmond, Oklahoma. Morgan is one of several touring pro golfers who call Edmond and Oak Tree home. From Thanksgiving Day of 1987 to Memorial Day of 1990, I also called Edmond home.

Dad and I are remembering good times in Edmond tonight. In August of 1988 the Oak Tree Club hosted the 70th PGA Championship*. Dad attended the tournament and my mom soaked up the company of her small grandsons. We celebrated my oldest's sixth birthday on the day of the first round. My gosh, we were all so young!

The "Oak Tree Gang" includes seniors Morgan, Dave Edwards, Mark Hayes, and Doug Tewell playing today. "Gang" youngsters Bob Tway, Willie Wood, and Scott Verplank are still too young for the Champions Tour (and AARP). My little Edmond gang of sons spent a lot of time running through sprinklers, falling into duck ponds, getting cockleburs in their socks, and staining those socks with the red Oklahoma mud.

The next year Mom and I joined Dad at the Southwestern Bell Classic senior tournament** at Quail Creek Golf and Country Club in Oklahoma City. Mom was every bit as enthusiastic about attending as Dad, as long as she was assured plenty of grandson time. This was my first golf tournament, and I can still remember watching Chi Chi Rodriguez and Gary Player, and following tall Al Geiberger for several holes with Dad. That was 1989, the year Callaways unveiled Big Bertha drivers!

Misty-eyed tonight. Since the continuing drought in North Texas requires limited watering of lawns and golf courses, maybe I should go stand on a green!

*Won by Jeff Sluman, in case you are wondering.
**Bobby Nichols.

Good Design and Easier Living

2006-03-25T17:23:00.000-06:00

I still don't know why I believed as a beginning reader that this book on my mom's high shelf was a Guide to Easter Living. It must have been the font, as it is unlikely Fritzi would have called it a "homemaker's Bible". Still, Mary and Russel Wright's book, Guide to Easier Living, is a treasure reminding me of Mom. I brought it back from Nebraska last week after a good spring break with my dad. The Wright's book is the precursor for Martha Stewart, and for Proctor & Gamble's website, HomeMadeSimple "simple solutions for easy living," where you can play a Swiffer Dusters Clean Scene interactive game resembling The Sims, but tidier.

Mom's Guide to Easier Living is copyrighted 1954. It was a revolutionary volume for the post-WWII families moving into suburbia and a new casual lifestyle. Russel Wright's dinnerware pattern, "American Modern" sold more placesettings than any other in history with it's clean borderless aesthetic and stackability. You can find lots of this dinnerware on eBay. Wright "merged organic grace and technical rigor with an air of luxurious utility" according to Design Within Reach. The more I Googled, the more connected I felt to Fritzi.

The book has been reissued, and is as vital now as it was fifty years ago when we lived at 26th and Franklin.

My parents and my college watercolor professor were the only people who ever spoke of the "Good Design" mid-century modern movement. Now "Good Design" is more widely appreciated than ever. A touring exhibit, Russel Wright: Good Design is for Everyone will open at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio in Lancaster, Ohio on May 5, 2006, before traveling to Columbus, IN, Palm Springs, CA, Tulane University in NOLA, and Bellevue, WA.

Each year The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design awards prizes in a variety of categories. The Museum’s historic GOOD DESIGN program originated in Chicago in 1950 and was organized by Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., former curator of the Museum of Modern Art. Originally the program introduced state-of-the-art, modern products into the office and the home marketplace throughout the post-World War II decade. The program featured products and installations by some of America’s pioneers of modern design including: Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Russel Wright, Florence Knoll, and George Nelson—the most prominent design minds in America in the 1950s who blazoned a new international direction in design.

The Good Design/Easier Living proponents believed that products for the home, office, and business should be beautiful as well as functional and affordable. So did Mom. I am lucky that she shared this aesthetic philosophy with me.

Goodbye to two friends

2006-02-24T18:59:00.000-06:00

The good news today, my dad says, is he doesn't have to break it to Fritzi that the Berghoff is closing. She would be so upset.

When I went to Chicago for the first time on a college art class trip, Mom told me about the Berghoff and the Palmer House. In the early years of marriage before I broke onto their scene, my parents took the train to Chicago for baseball games, visits to the Art Institute, and lunches at the Berghoff.

I've only been to Chicago three times, but the Berghoff was a part of every trip. The wonderful waiters with the white towels over their arms were a constant in a world that sometimes seemed to be skidding off the track. After 108 years the Berghoff family is closing the restaurant.

Time passes. The soap opera intro says, "As sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." The black wall clock on the blue wall has been at the dining room heart of our family for forty five years. The clean Fifties design is by George Nelson for Herman Miller, I think. About thirty years ago the second hand began to lag at a certain point in its orbit that gave meals a sense of pauses and nonlinear time.

Howie and Fritz's first grandchild was transfixed by The Clock. This colicky little guy always responded to the sight of the twelve black circles and the moving hands. He started saying "clock" about the same time he could say "mama", well before his first birthday.

Now it is always thirty-five seconds past the minute. How will Dad break the news to my son? Time moves on, even if the clock hands don't. Eat the dumplings while ye may.

To Virgins to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting;
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best, which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Backyard visit

2005-12-24T20:07:00.000-06:00

Forty-seven years on Eastridge Drive, and I never ever saw a hawk in the backyard. Owls, yes, but a hawk, no.

Dad and I have shared a week of memories and good meals, with Mom always in our minds. Much of the time I sat in her chair looking out at her swing in the backyard, watching the squirrels.

One morning I put disc one of this cd in the player. When a dearly demented friend shared this recording with me, it seemed to give my buried grief a powerful, beautiful escalator to a higher level.
Dad had gone to run errands. My plans to read were detoured as the music demanded my full attention. As the Elgar Concerto for Cello in E Minor shivered my timbers, I glanced up to see a large hawk fly low from around the corner of the house where I sat across the backyard to land on the down-curving branch of the locust tree. Supremely formed and informed in gray feathers with a prominent eyebrow, it glared down at a surprised squirrel in the grass and laser-beamed the cosmic pronouncement, "You are so lunch."

My heart expanded with joy, awe, and a profound connection to my mother. This was her force and focus, her opinion, discerning eye, and discipline. This was the Mom we did not cross or disappoint.

The gray hawk continued to glare as I raced down the hall to get the camera, and just as I centered it in my view finder it took off in a low swoop up the hill into the next yard. My photo is an empty branch.

Later, I got out Mom's bird guidebooks. Hawk, gray, eyebrow, low swoop and perch...Northern Goshawk? Harrier?

The harrier has the uncharacteristic flight: Description - This long-winged, long-tailed hawk is usually seen gliding unsteadily over marshes with its wings held in a shallow V. The rump is white and the wing tips black; the male has a pale grey back, head and breast and the female and young are brown above and streaked below. It is a usually silent bird but at the nest it utters a "kee-kee-kee-kee" or a sharp whistle. Distribution - The Northern Harrier occurs throughout all of North America, breeding as far south as California and wintering from South America to British Columbia. It prefers marshes and open grasslands. Biology - This bird hunts its prey, which includes mice, rats and frogs, by flying close to the ground and taking these small animals by surprise. They lay 4 or 5 pale blue or white eggs on a mound of dead reeds and grass in a marsh or shrubby meadow.

Paul Johnsgard's guide to Nebraska birds keeps me wondering if the bird was a goshawk or a harrier:

Northern Harrier -- Circus cyaneus A common migrant and permanent resident throughout Nebraska. Although in cold winters most birds may leave the state, in most areas and years the species can be regarded as a resident. It is probably most common as a breeder in the Sandhills. It breeds locally almost throughout the Plains States, and is a regular throughout during migration. Migration: Thirty-nine initial spring sightings range from January 1 to June 2, with a median of March 13. The wide spread of the records suggest it is a resident over much of the state. Thirty-six final fall records are from September 14 to December 31, with a median of December 9. Habitats: This species occurs in open habitats such as native grasslands, prairie marshes and wet meadows. Nesting is done in grassy or woody vegetation ranging from upland grasses and shrubs to emergent vegetation in water more than two feet deep. Comments: Northern harriers are graceful predators, that are usually seen sweeping low over marshes and fields, and showing white rump patches in both sexes. Adult males are otherwise silvery gray with black wingtips, whereas females and young males are mostly chocolate brown. Breeding Bird surveys between 1984 and 1993 indicate that the species has undergone a significant population increase during that period.

Northern Goshawk -- Accipiter gentilis An occasional winter visitor and spring migrant nearly statewide. Probably less common now than earlier, but there have been recent observations from Box Butte, Cherry, Custer, Saunders, and Lancaster counties according to Game and Parks Commission records. The only areas of breeding in the Plains States are the Black Hills and northern Minnesota, but it is a migrant throughout. Migration: Forty-eight spring records range from January 1 to June 1, with a median of March 15. Half of the records fall within the two periods January 1-11 and April 14 to May 16, suggesting this species is both a winter visitor and late spring migrant. Twenty-two total fall records are from September 16 to December 31, with half of the records occurring within the two periods September 21-October 17 and December 25-31. Habitats: Throughout the year this species is rarely found far from wooded to heavily forested areas. Comments: The Latin name of the goshawk may suggest it is "gentle", but the name really refers to the royal nature of the bird. The common name goshawk refers to the species' ability to attack and kill geese and similar sized birds. Breeding Bird surveys between 1984 and 1993 indicate that the species has undergone a significant population decline during that period.

A full day later, I realize the backyard hawk was the real life model for the Japanese scroll print that has hung in the bathroom for thirty years. Fritzi no longer frets about the condition of the dark green and peach bath towels and wash cloths. I won't either.

My happy Thanksgiving visitor

2005-11-24T10:31:00.000-06:00

The turkey is in the oven. The stuffing is made. I've added a dilly swiss green bean casserole to our traditional menu in honor of the fiftieth birthday of the Campbell's mushroom soup green bean casserole.

It's too soon to start the sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. For one thing, the college freshman won't wake up for at least an hour. I'm not sure when the grad student will be over from his dad's house. It's quiet, in a homey way.

While checking my email I realized a bird was chirping at me in a very close and insistent way. As I scanned the patio and the shed roof the chirps got even more emphatic. Look! Look up here! I'm here! I'm here!

When I spied the little tannish-grey-green bird at the top of the fence, just ten feet away, it chirped twice more, then did something quite surprising. Like an Olympic triple-jumper, it hopped in three huge hops, each over three feet along the fence top, making sure I could notice its dark eye stripe. Then it was gone behind the shed. It hasn't been back as I've typed this.

I felt a huge wave of happiness and closeness with Fritzi. Then the tears just flooded. I will talk to my dad later today, buy I won't be able to voice this experience. Some experiences have to be written.

For Altoids You Do

2005-11-15T22:04:00.000-06:00

This Blog's For You

I want to thank everyone who saved and contributed "good junk" for my art classes this year. We just completed a project about shapes and shadows, and the sculptress Louise Nevelson. Two hundred students used "good junk", and we still couldn't use up our stockpile.

We've got to clean out the storage closet at work. It is a very scary place, reminiscent of the Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room!

Fritzi would be pleased

2005-08-05T19:17:00.000-05:00

A dearly demented friend and I celebrated New Year's 2005 by emailing back and forth about recyclables collection in Seattle, and wishing we had a similar service in the DFW area. Old Dearly Demented passed some of our comments on to city council members, who passed them on to civil servants. My concerns were assigned to a young Commercial Diversion Coordinator named Christopher. We set up an appointment to meet at my condo, tour the complex, and brainstorm recycling collection options for January fourteenth. In a surreal moment of hyper-practicality and blasted-through-a-cement wall emotion, the first call I made after learning that my mother had passed away January fourteenth was to this young man to cancel our appointment. (I couldn't cancel the appointment with the equally young plumber, since I couldn't leave town with my kitchen sink clogged and leaking.)

It was over a month before I could think much about recycling. Waste audits of the complex dumpsters' contents showed nearly sixty percent of our garbage was recyclable. Christopher and I finally met in February, and began our plan to convince the condo owners association and board, the management company, and the city that recycling collection in the complex could be feasible. Only one apartment complex in the city has regular pick-up, and no condo communities. This was a chance to change the city program as well as make it easier for me to recycle all my junk mail!

Mom was so involved in collecting items for me to reuse in my art classes, and was a can-crusher from way back in the early days of recycling. I think she would be pleased that eight recycling collection carts were delivered to the condos and conveniently placed around the complex on the eve of her birthday. Work remains to inform and encourage residents to participate. If we can make recycling work, the city is willing to expand collection to other complexes. If Plano can make it work, maybe Dallas will be encouraged to expand services to its large apartment and townhouse population.

Please join me. Honor your mother and our Mother Earth.
Reduce--Reuse--Recycle.

Grief sneaks up

2005-07-27T20:14:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's a flavor or a smell. Other times it's the news. Thanks to a dear, watchful friend, today it's an op-ed. My buddy caught Maureen Dowd's return to the New York Times opinion page, and her wonderful column about her mother, Peggy Dowd. I wasn't expecting the column to be a eulogy as I read along learning about this alert, informed, creative woman who wanted to be a writer.

Tonight I feel honored that Fritzi considered being our mom a meaningful career and performed it with such generosity, practicality, respect, firmness, and love. How did she understand the importance of the Sunday family rituals, and celebrate them with us so consistently? Our family was anchored by the Sunday lunch of crackers and cheese in the living room, and the Sunday evening broiling of steak. We knew what to expect, and what behaviour was expected of us. Sunday was not set aside in the church-going sense, but it was always our special family time.

NASA launched the space shuttle Discovery yesterday morning. Fritzi spent a fabulous Grandma Day in Omaha, January 28, 1986, with precocious three year-old Jeffy, baby Mike, and I. We were so lucky that Mom was able to drive up and spend relaxed days with us often. That particular day, as Mom got settled in her car to drive back to Lincoln, I opened the evening Omaha World-Herald. Challenger had exploded on its launch. I can still see the five p.m. winter sun on the snow as I showed Mom the headline through her car window. Our reactions were mirror images of shock as our sense of a perfect day spent together was unable to accept this news.

Arcing upward

2005-07-18T18:51:00.000-05:00

My sister reports that Dad is doing pretty well--not letting himself or the house go. She also says that "Fritzi is in the shade all day". Somehow, I don't think of Fritzi or of her spirit as being in the niche in the columbarium whether it's in the shade or not. Still, it's good to know that it's a beautiful spot for Howie to visit. My sister says the pilot banked the airplane just perfectly after take-off for she and her daughter to look down on the church courtyard before the wing blocked their view.

It's been a weepy day.

Device Circle

2005-06-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure we had this jigsaw puzzle set out on a card table in the living room during the blizzard when we saw the snowy owl in our backyard pine trees. The puzzle of Jasper John's oil painting was a family favorite. Fritzi enjoyed working jigsaw puzzles with us almost as much as she liked playing Scrabble or going along to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. I am glad my sons will always have the memory of playing Scrabble together, three generations sitting at the round dining table with the board on the big lazy susan, their grandma basking in the shared moment.

Just opened my Dallas Museum of Art member magazine for July-September 2005. There's an intriguing large exhibit called Dialogues: Duchamp, Cornell, Johns, Rauschenberg coming up after the Gordon Parks' photography exhibit ends 9/4/05. It sounds as fascinating as the 2000 exhibit The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso. [I checked, but there's not much on the DMA website yet.]

My parents came to visit during the 2000 "Camera" exhibit, and three generations were wowed. My folks drove down again during the spring of 2001, and we were awed by the DMA's Henry Moore exhibition. I will never forget Moore's drawings of the people in the underground subway shelters during the London blitz of WWII.

I'm marking my calendar for a lecture by filmmaker Larry Jordan on the films of Joseph Cornell, Thursday, 9/15/05, at 7 p.m. in the Horchow Auditorium. There will be a screening of the experimental silent films of Cornell, and rare footage of the artist at work. It's only $5 for DMA members, $10 for the public. Make reservations at 214-922-1826. I'll look for you there!

This is the info from the DMA magazine:
Dialogues: Duchamp, Cornell, Johns, Rauschenberg
9/4/05-1/8/06
J.E.R. Chilton Galleries

This fall the Dallas Museum of Art examines the complex and textured artistic dialogue among four seminal modern artists...

Dialogues will study the artists' incorporation of found and assembled objects, with the central work of the exhibition being Duchamp's Green Box, a piece that had a profound significance throughout the century. The intersection of these artists draws from different sides of Dada, Neo-Dada, surrealism, minimalism, abstract expressionism, and pop art.

The exhibit will include more than forty works by Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. More than half of the works will be drawn from the Museum's own holdings and from the Marguerite and Robert Hoffman Collection, which was recently committed to the DMA.

Dialogues will go beyond the artists' real interaction and knowledge of one another's work to examine how the both adopted and contested different aspects of each other's creations. The exhibition will delve into the artist' use of appropriated icons, language, simple machines, circles, and mechanical movement, providing a rich intellectual exploration of major currents in 20th-century modern art.

Dialogues will push the viewer to reconsider the work of these seminal artists of the modern tradition through a new lens.
Out of town visitors welcome at Miz Nancy's Empty Nest B&B!!
Motto--You don't go barefoot in my kitchen, and I won't serve you Pop-Tarts.
Alternate motto--That tickly thang between the sheets is just a piece of Bounce.
--

Death of a student

2005-06-08T20:32:00.000-05:00

Children die. All over the world. Every single day. From malnutrition, disease, birth complications and genetic disorders. By suicide. From land mines half-way around the globe, and from random bullet sprays in gang violence a few miles from my home. From swim pool accidents in gated communities, and horrifying abuse by mother's live-in boyfriends. They are left in locked cars in the Texas summer, or thrown from cars because they weren't properly fastened into a car safety seat. Children without life jackets at the lake, or active supervision on the playground. Some are attacked by the neighbor's Rottweiler, and some by the neighbor. They find loaded guns at home. They are victims of unspeakable crimes by parents who swear God told them to do it. Not the concern of the current administration, but impacting families every single hour of every single day.

It shouldn't happen. Not here. It shouldn't happen anywhere, but it always will. It shouldn't happen now, but our species is not as civilized as we fancy ourselves. In our fantasy mental version of modern medicine, children don't die. But they do. It's the pits. Life has no pause button and no rewind, and there's no guarantee that it will make sense.

When a child dies, it is "time out of whack" for the parents, my coworker explains. This week has given me cause to consider the death of a sweet, sweet child, of a student, and also to wonder about the siblings of the deceased. That concern for the young brothers has been lurking just off stage in my brain all week. What could I possibly say to the boys after the sudden death of their sister?

It was so difficult reading cards and writing letters when Fritzi died. Conversations were even harder. It didn't make sense. It shouldn't have happened. It hurt, and it still hurts. What helped me? I didn't "get on with life", or "get over it". Mourning is not like that. One doesn't just "get back to normal life."

The thing is, "normal" has changed. There's no rewind or pause. I work to accept the changes in the frustrated person holding the remote control and clicking without results. I am not in control, but I'm less remote.

Writing posts for this blog has helped me find a calm, safe spot. No answers or explanations. Just little hints at finding acceptance for myself, and some courage to explore changing relationships. Tiny glimpses of my life's purpose.

Writing has also been a way to Photoshop the mental images of my mother to find enhanced meaning and resolution. Some images needed to be blurred or to have the shadows softened. Other images needed the colors and definition adjusted. Sometimes the midtones had overpowered the highlights. The saturation levels required fine-tuning. Writing. Writing....

Woke up in the middle of the night knowing what I could tell the young brothers. I could tell them how I wrote stories about Fritzi. I hope I've written the letter in vocabulary the young brothers can understand. I hope they will consider my suggestion that they write stories, or make drawings. Writing has helped me more than I can describe. May these young brothers find a creative way to send their feelings, energy, sadness, creativity, and memory outward in a way that helps their larger family.

The Lincoln Lunch Gang

2005-06-07T20:49:00.000-05:00

Dad went to lunch at Wendy's with two friends after playing nine holes of golf this morning. I'm thrilled that he has connected with these guys who visit about their experiences and feelings in old age and loneliness. Next week they are upgrading to a steak and baked potato lunch at Lone Star.

I bet the old guys tip better than my students. Had to use the waitress analogy in classes yesterday. Kids were shouting across the room that they wanted red paper, or purple, or they needed glue, or a long list of other demands.

"Wait," I said. "Imagine you are in a restaurant. Do you shout your order across the whole dining room? Or do you wait until the waiter comes to your table and quietly asks you for your order?"

Go ahead. Make my day.

2005-06-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

Being a seriously frustrated FDR New Deal Democrat, these are difficult times for my dad. He's disgusted and, yes, outraged. How could he not be? He's eighty-two, and the country's in the worst mess he can recall. He's paying attention to the news. It worries me, since most of the news is bad for anybody's blood pressure. So I found a bumper sticker on-line and had it sent to him, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

Dad's so excited he went out to the carport and slapped that puppy on the car bumper. Never in my fifty years has my dad allowed a bumper sticker on his car. He wouldn't even let me paint daisies on the '54 pea green Chevy when I was in high school. I love his big, bold, what-the-hell attitude. The car may outlast him. The bumper sticker may hold the car together. It's going to be more aesthetically pleasing than my Buick, which is held together with bird poop and bug guts, weathered by the harsh Dallas climate and poor air quality. [Remember learning about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks??]

Dad's more informed than 98% of the American population. I had to forbid him watching, reading, or listening to any news story about the Kansas science curriculum. It's difficult managing his news intake from three states away!

Now, if Dad could get a Nascar sponsorship from Miller Genuine Draft, his car would be a source of income and enlightenment both.

Bachelor Chefs

2005-05-30T16:28:00.000-05:00

My eighty-two year old father talks on the phone with my twenty year old son about the ice crystals in the bag of frozen hashbrowns. They are just two guys cooking for themselves, separated by 576 miles.

I suspect both of them sometimes use the infamous "sniff test" to decide if their clothes are really too gross to wear again. Nobody likes doing the "sniff test" in the refrigerator, though. That's why I was pleased to find this storage safety chart for keeping foods in the refrigerator and the freezer. It comes from the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education.

I like Mrs. Cookwell. She reminds me of my mom and my grandma. I liked this tip, too, even though it goes against my upbringing. I think Mom used to worry that the hot leftovers would warm up the refrigerator too much, so she let most foods cool before placing them in the fridge. She must have been pretty savvy about bacteria growth, though, since we were never bothered by food poisoning:

Should you cool leftovers before refrigerating?
No, you do not need to cool hot food before you put it in the fridge, but very hot food (e.g. simmering chili) can be left out for 30 minutes before refrigerating. The key is to cool hot food quickly to prevent bacteria growth. Bacteria grow very well in the temperature range of 4ºC - 60ºC. Food should be cooled to 4ºC or lower as quickly as possible.
Fast cooling tips include:
Store food in shallow containers (3 inches (8 cm) or less).
Stir hot foods occasionally to speed-up cooling.
Do not stuff the fridge - allow cool air to circulate around food.

If I had ever studied an instrument, besides the piano, it would have been the sax. Piano lessons provided plenty of evidence that I probably didn't need to study another instrument! That is why I push the buttons on the blender and sing "Born to be Wild" to the revving sounds...

Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild.

We don't like growing wild green fuzzy stuff in the refrigerator, or even purple haze on the leftovers. It's not safe to eat!

Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don’t seem the same
Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why
’scuse me while I kiss the sky

'Scuse me while Jimi Hendrix and I go clean out the Frigidaire.

Relief

2005-05-26T18:01:00.000-05:00

Nearing this first Memorial Day has been difficult, perhaps more than the first Mother's Day. We had not ventured into the tricky discussion of when we could get together to place my mother's ashes in the columbarium, or niche, at the church for some time. Still, the thought that the box containing her ashes might be sitting on a shelf in some closet at the church was nagging me. I knew it had to be bothering my dad. I felt very guilty that I had not been able to fly home at the same time as my sister to meet my brother and help Dad put the ashes in the niche.

I finally brought up the subject last evening, and Dad mentioned that the church might have already placed the ashes in the niche and done the engraving once the temperature rose above freezing. It didn't seem likely to me, but I said I would call the church today.

The kind church secretary who answered my call walked out to the columbarium in the courtyard to visually verify that the engraving had been done and the niche sealed. What a weight lifted off me. I hoped Dad and my siblings would feel the same, but I worried that Dad might be upset that he hadn't been there at the time the niche was sealed. I wondered, too, why the church had not informed any of us that the ashes were placed and the engraving done. Then I realized that there must be many times when no family is left for the church to notify when ashes are placed.

When I called Dad with the news, he wept with relief. My siblings are both feeling lighter now. The columbarium is a lovely place, in fact, it is next to the lovely courtyard where I was married, a place I have always loved.

My brother plans to take Dad to "visit Mom" at the columbarium very soon, then drive him out to the Lee's on Cottingham and West Van Dorn. Lee's has always been our family's restaurant for commemorating significant occasions.

My parents very practically planned ahead, and secured space in the church courtyard columbarium when it was constructed, which was a wonderful gift to their children. It's been a gift, too, that they so realistically prepared their "Five Wishes" a few years back.

THE CHAPEL COURTYARD

The Chapel Courtyard, to the east of the main courtyard, was redesigned as a memorial garden in 1990. The east and south walls contain columbarium niches for urns containing the ashes of those who have been cremated.
The area is intended to be a welcoming place of peace, reflection and remembrance in the midst of a busy city.

My regret now is that I didn't ask enough questions to know the ashes would be placed in the niche by the church, and to request notification when it was done. Many sleepless hours could have been prevented.

In a strange way it helps me to know that the memorials for Mom to the Morrill Hall State Museum contribute to the Museum's programs at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park. My mother loved this park and the State Museum's ongoing excavation of mammal fossils buried in a volcanic ashfall ten million years ago.

Our sense of control is an illusion. We are all grazing on a grassland, oblivious to the volcanic rumblings. Mom would have said, "Graze well".

Dutch door

2005-05-21T19:53:00.000-05:00

Fritzi is in the kitchen now. Her kitchen. She is carefully and skillfully mounting our butterfly specimens on corrugated cardboard. She is concentrating, but also relaxed, in the flow.

The kitchen and the butterflies and Fritzi are all in my memory, but how welcome these images are! I just realized that these are the images of my mother that come first to the surface now, replacing the images of her suffering and illness. This is the Fritzi that I casually chat with about little things while I drive to work or the store, just letting her know how the boys are doing, or the nice lunch a student's mother brought for all the teachers on the last day of class. I know Mom would have enjoyed the tortellini salad and croissants.

I've been looking at photos of my mother in happier times for four months now, trying to reset my memory. Writing about fishing and butterflies seemed to help me over the bump.

Take Me Fishing

2005-05-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

Did I ever mention how I cried at the end of the "Mary Poppins" movie the afternoon of Easter Sunday 1964 at the Stuart Theater in downtown Lincoln? There are so many things I don't or can't cry about, that I forget the many times I've tried to pretend I wasn't really crying over Hallmark moments, real or commercial.

Usually I cry very quietly. "I've got tears in my ears from lying on my back while I cry over you." I pretend it's allergies, or a nosebleed. By contrast, my sister went on a loud and inconsolable sobbing spree at the conclusion of a play of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" at the Lincoln Community Theater when she was about three. My youngest had a similar reaction at the same age because a rainbow was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He didn't want to lose the rainbow because he was afraid he would never see anything that beautiful again. How interesting that he finishes high school with plans to study photography.

This experience of grief and loss changes us. Our emotions stay closer to the surface, and express themselves more obviously. The phrase "permeable membrane" always pops into my mind. We are in a state of openness, even when we would rather not be. We are left ajar. We hug more, and say, "I love you."

I spent so many wonderful hours sitting in front of our house with my dad waiting for a storm and counting out "one milk bottle, two milk bottle, three..." after each flash of lightning. We didn't always have to talk. We could just sit in the webbed lawnchairs near the congregation of boxelder bugs by the concrete stoop and watch the sky turn greenish gray. How fortunate I was to have a father to teach me about being still and watching nature!

Dad is greatly touched by ads in the Take Me Fishing campaign in print and tv. The ads get him all choked up, and I can see why. They get to me, too. That PR company should get an award from Kleenex!

Dad did take us fishing. We started off with bamboo poles and red/white bobbers, catching sunfish and crappie. It wasn't important if we caught anything, but it was very important that we were quiet, patient, and observant, and that we were respectful of the fish and other fishermen.

We graduated to fishing with rod and reel, and catching northern pike at the then new reservoirs in southeast Nebraska. It was a moment of enormous pride when I received my very own fishing rod for my tenth birthday. The rod was a beautiful dragonfly blue and delivered the tacit message that I was worthy of this very grown-up gift. I don't think I've ever felt more proud.

My parents also took us butterfly hunting. I used to watch a tv show called "The American Sportsman" narrated by Curt Goudy while my dad dozed on the couch on late Sunday afternoons. Celebrities would hunt for trophy animals, with a soundtrack of heavy breathing and footsteps through tall grasses. Later on Sundays we would watch "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" with Marlin Perkins.

Dad probably crafted the first butterfly nets so I could earn a Campfire Girl bead. Before long we were all learning about butterflies, their host plants and life cycle, patience, and a bit of coordination. I have mixed feelings about hunting, but I know that this butterfly hobby gave me a permanent connection to nature. I hope that I honor the butterflies and moths we collected every time I teach an art project about insects or other animals. I hope that some of my students are entranced by the poetry of plant and animal names--swallowtail, sphinx, milkweed, rainbow, painted lady, question mark, bullhead, red spotted purple, sunfish, red admiral, Queen Anne's lace, cattails.

Dad helped me be a rockhound, too. The rock tumbler was the impetus for many magical father-daughter visits to the lapidary shop.

As I write this I get a bit Mary Poppins-ish. I'm seeing time spent with Dad in the basement at his workbench learning to hammer and saw....the building of the wonderful treehouse where I spent so many hours being creative and enjoying solitude, the screened house for raising praying mantis babies, and time wading in lakes and creeks. Dad doesn't know how inspiring his tales of trying to dam Willow Creek with rocks in his childhood were to me, even though the attempts were futile. The unsuccessful results of his early engineering efforts may have been the most enduring message: Get your bare toes out there in the mud and work with the wonders of nature!

Warm and cold memories

2005-05-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

The little grey-green bird flitted through my patio for a few seconds this afternoon. All the birds are agitated. Maybe the weather is changing.

Instead of thinking spring Mother's Day thoughts, I am remembering a favorite event from childhood. Fritzi would be wearing a soft charcoal winter coat that wrapped instead of buttoned.

I wonder if Eastridge Presbyterian Church still sponsors a Boy Scout troop. When I was a kid the troop held an annual pancake feed fundraiser. The Boy Scout Pancake Feed was a red letter, capital letter event on our calendar. It was pretty much guaranteed to be held on the very coldest night of the year, and was a major Eastridge social event. We would all come out of our igloos bundled to the max, drive to the church, have to park so far away that we should have just walked through the snow and ice, to stand in the serving line for the pancakes and sausage. The scout leaders would be whomping up the pancakes, the Boy Scouts would be busing tables or helping carry plates for little kids. Adults would be visiting with neighbors they hadn't seen since lawnmowing season ended, and the kids would be hanging out with their friends from school. It would be so cold in the foyer of the church with all the people coming and going, stamping the snow off their boots, but downstairs in the fellowship hall it would be so steamy warm and filled with the smell of syrup, coffee, and sausage. The hall would be a beehive of voices, and the energy was so good. Excitement would eventually give way to the sleepiness of a tummy full of pancakes, and daddies would have to carry little ones home to bed. Makes me want to tie a neckerchief and get out the Log Cabin.

My Mommy is a Picture

2005-05-03T19:20:00.000-05:00

The first art contest I ever won was sponsored by the Gateway Bank at Lincoln's first shopping mall. Gateway Mall was built at 61st and O Streets in 1959-60. "My Mommy is a Picture" was the name of the contest, which doesn't always translate to meaning one's mom is pretty as a picture. The neighbor kids told me that my painting of my mom was really ugly, but I won. My mom did not have a flip hairdo, or magenta lips in the picture. I hadn't handled the paints very skillfully, and I had a lot of trouble mixing the apricot/peach color of Fritzi's dress. This was the early Sixties, and I was eight years old or younger. The painting was probably done on a piece of shirt cardboard or scrap paper from Dad's office. I know it was covered in Saran Wrap to look more "professional". Presentation is so important in competitions! The big prize was either one dollar or three. Gateway Bank might have hoped I would open an account with my winnings.

My sister and I found the costume jewelry that went with Fritzi's apricot/peach dress in January. The short minutes we spent looking through Mom's jewelry box were a very powerful reconnection for us. We both felt like we were little girls waiting for the bridge club ladies to arrive and eat dessert.

It was so exciting for us to greet those ladies, to stay up past eight although already in our PJs, and to help carry the plates of ice cream pie or blueberry dessert out to the living room. Once we were tucked into bed, the sounds of the ladies visiting and the cards on the folding tables lulled us to sleep against our will.

My elementary art students are making "My Mommy is a Picture" portraits to give their moms next Sunday. The cut and torn construction paper efforts often bear a surprising resemblance to the students' mothers. The portraits don't have magenta princess lips or flip hairdos. They look like moms who drive carpools, get sunburned at t-ball games, deal with the kitty litter, and somehow forget to carry in the last grocery bag from the car trunk, the bag with the pound of ground chuck.

Tote Bag

2005-05-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

I convinced Dad to fly home with just a canvas tote shoulder bag for a carry-on. He arrived here ten days ago worn out from hauling a duffel packed to the brim with stuff he didn't need to be dragging all around the Denver terminal just so he would have the Ted Kooser book, Delights and Shadows, snacks, and his prescriptions.

When we got to DFW this morning, I tried to get him checked in curbside so we could get rid of his luggage ASAP. The checker said he couldn't issue Dad bag tags. Fortunately, I decifered the mumbo-jumbo to mean Dad had been pre-selected for full security screening. He's eighty-two years old and looks really menacing. He's been known to rant about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Sam Walton, the pope, Bolton, Tom DeLay, The Media, Condie Rice, Saddam, and many more since back before Richard Nixon told the nation that sad, sad story about Pat's cloth coat and Julie and Tricia's little dog, Checkers. We went inside to the United counter to check in. I hadn't wanted to do it on-line in case the counter agent could give Dad a better seat than I had purchased for him. That's what happened on his way here. Since I was doing most of the talking to the counter agent, she asked if I would like to accompany Dad to the gate. This is a great thing to remember. I didn't know it could be done, but it made a huge difference. My savvy flyer friend didn't know it could be done, either, so that is why I am posting this. Maybe someone else can ease a departure for a relative. When I told the agent that I would like to accompany Dad to the gate, she checked out my ID and gave me a pass to go through security. That way I was there to interpret for Dad about his full belt buckle security screening, so he wouldn't get worried. I wonder if the baggage x-ray on his flight down here showed his fiendish fingernail clipper, so he was coded as a terrorist instead of a delightful Old Fart with chronic nail fungus. Once through security we went to McD's for coffee. We relaxed, and I figured out the timing for visiting the restroom and going on over to sit at the B30 gate. It's very different flying out from an international airport, than flying from the little airport in Lincoln, Nebraska. The flight boarded at least twenty minutes late, and Dad said he would have been very antsy waiting by himself. Many things have changed in the fifteen years since he last flew.

We chatted about the time my parents won a trip to New York City with some other engineers. This is one of my first major memories. I was in kindergarten in 1960. Mom sewed all the outfits she would wear on the trip. I still have tiny fabric scraps from the purple and gold irridescent weave for her cocktail dress, and for the lovely matching purple stole. I thought the outfits were incredibly glamorous. Just like today, the airline was United. Passengers back then received navy blue canvas bags of flight amenities--peanuts, matchbooks, barf bags, and possibly playing cards. I remember the canvas bags, since they soon ended up in our childhood play "dress-up box".

My parents visited FAO Schwarz in NYC in 1960. They brought back one toy for each of us. My toy was a Hasbro Fizzies Fountain. My brother got a toy airplane. My baby sister got an awesome wooden spinning merry-go-round toy with wooden people similar to later plastic Fisher Price people.

Mrs. Schidler was our babysitter while our parents were off on this amazing trip. Mrs. Schidler was pretty amazing, too, even if I can't scroll up an image of her from my memory data bank. She was a pancake batter artist! She could make any shape of pancake you could imagine.

When my parents returned to Lincoln, Mrs. Schidler and we three kids were watching from the open air observation deck. We could see Howie and Fritz walk down the roll-out stairway and across the concrete to the terminal. Looking back I realize they were two young sweethearts returning from a second honeymoon in the Big Apple.

Statement of faith

2005-04-20T19:53:00.000-05:00

My ancestor, the Unknown Liska, left the Ukraine in the early 1800's, and walked to Bohemia. In some stories, the Unknown Liska took all his belongings in a wheelbarrow. In other versions he pushed his mother all the way to Bohemia in the wheelbarrow.

I don't have much experience with wheelbarrows, but I have read the story of Mr. MacGregor and Peter Rabbit aloud many times. My ancestors were variously Catholic and anti-Catholic and who knows what else. They may have even been foxes. Liska means vixen in Czech.

I am not a world traveler, but I am an intellectual resident of the whole Earth. My core connection to that Earth is through a certain type of landscape that is vast and open to the sky and the far-off horizon. I am connected to creation and to preservation, to curiosity, and respect. I am descended from the early humans who moved out of Africa to the steppes, and who developed the skill and compassion to care for that toothless old man and not leave him for the saber tooth tiger to finish off. I do not believe that God is on my side, or yours, or anyone else's. Fifty years old, and I still don't get the whole religion thing.

Fither Pellows

2005-04-20T00:34:00.000-05:00

Dad is coming to visit. He only sleeps on a feather pillow. At least that is my recollection, and I need to have all bases covered.

Dashed into Super Target this morning on the way to work. Scooped towels, sheets, pillows (feather and foam), Honey Nut Cheerios twin pack, Trident peppermint, and two cheapo plastic wastebaskets into my cart. Dang. Why don't friends give showers for relatives' visits instead of when you get married? Believe me, thirty years down the road you really appreciate new sheets and towels! Dewy-eyed love has faded, and a new rubber spatula makes you quiver with delight.

Speaking of covering bases, I am washing the cushions for the kitchen chairs. They look like baseball bases. Don't worry. I won't be sliding into second or third. Haven't Swiffered yet, so the floor is way too sticky for sliding!

Boy Orator of the Platte

2005-04-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

In third grade our teacher, Mrs. Alschwede, read us the story of Howard Carter's discovery of Tut's tomb. She was reading it the day we got word that President Kennedy had been assassinated. "Assassinated" is a big vocabulary word for a third grader, but then, so is "Tutankhamen".

I was blasted even further into the larger world by the 1964 Good Friday Alaskan earthquake. I didn't really have a grasp on the "Good Friday" religious concept then, and I'm still pretty shaky. Our Sunday School teachers, Mrs. Mohlman and Mrs. Schwartzkopf, made sure we sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" every week in third grade Sunday School.

I got confused when Walter Cronkite reported on Viet Nam. If God ever speaks to me, I am sure it will be in Cronkite's voice.

We had a small black and white tv, but it still had the power to confuse Agent Orange and "trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."

On the way out the door after church, Mom would slip each of us a butterscotch drop to "tide us over". It's been forty-plus years, but if I go into a church I instantly crave butterscotch drops.

Mrs. Alschwede's third grade class went on a field trip to the Bennett Martin Public Library downtown. I can still see exactly where the biography shelf was in the Children's Room. We were encouraged to read biographies. Specifically, we were encouraged to read the Bobbs-Merrill Childhood of Famous Americans series:

Moore, Clyde B. J. STERLING MORTON ARBOR DAY BOY Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1962. J. Sterling Morton is a Nebraska hero. You can visit the Arbor Day site at http://www.arborday.org/arborday/history.cfm.

By the time HARVEY S. FIRESTONE YOUNG RUBBER PIONEER was published in 1968, I had moved well beyond the series. Still, I wouldn't want any of my sons known as "young rubber pioneers."

I was scissoring around some postage stamps Fritzi saved for me in a cake frosting can. I got to the Knute Rockne stamp. Van Riper, Guernsey Jr. KNUTE ROCKNE YOUNG ATHLETE Publisher: Bobbs-M errill 1952. It's funny the things that set you off. Rather than cry, I ventured forth on a search for those biographies of my wonder years:

Myers, Elisabeth P. GEORGE PULLMAN YOUNG SLEEPING CAR BUILDER Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1963.
de Grummond, Lena Young, and Delaune, Lynn de Grummond BABE DIDRIKSON GIRL ATHLETE Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1963.
Monsell, Helen A. DOLLY MADISON QUAKER GIRL Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1944.
Myers, Elisabeth P. F.W. WOOLWORTH FIVE AND TEN BOY Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1962. Stevenson, Augusta GEORGE CUSTER BOY OF ACTION Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1963.
Weil, Ann JOHN PHILIP SOUSA MARCHING BOY Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1959.
Wilkie, Katharine E. GEORGE ROGERS CLARK BOY OF THE OLD NORTHWEST Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill 1958.

It was about the same year that Mom and her buddy, Marilyn, decided we kids all needed a cultural outing. On a pouring-rain-steamy-day-sweating-in-your-plastic-raincoat day we were piled in the car and taken to the William Jennings Bryan house, "Fairview", on the grounds of Bryan Memorial Hospital. It's a black and white memory of Mom and Marilyn gasping when we all directed our attention to the Victorian sawed-off elephant leg umbrella holder!

I worked at Bryan Memorial as a volunteer and as kitchen employee. My dad would pick me up after my shift at the Lab Door just to the left of this spot. He was a Lab Door Retriever. If I was lucky, he would take me to Kings Drive In at 48th & O to get a deluxe cheeseburger.

The view from DQ

2005-03-30T20:22:00.000-06:00

Picked up my new spectacles this afternoon, and these bifocals are working great so far.

The shape is slightly different, much like a Dairy Queen logo, so I feel like an eye-fashion trendsetter! Mom would have orchestrated the eyeglasses pick-up for at least a DQ Buster Bar on the way back home.

Easter Bonnets

2005-03-27T16:12:00.000-06:00

"In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,
You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade.
I'll be all in clover and when they look you over,
I'll be the proudest fellow in the Easter Parade.
On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us,
And you'll find that you're in the rotogravure.
Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet,
And of the girl I'm taking to the Easter Parade." Irving Berlin

My sister found the box with our Easter bonnets in the closet of the room we shared as children. The two hats were packed in tissue paper. I am sure the box was tied with white string, although she didn't say. She had been in a lot of interesting boxes in that closet Wednesday, finding many sentimental gems.

In this photo from Easter 1960 I'm wearing a little blue hat with flowers and an itchy net tie that made a big bow under my chin. I think the dress is coral pink with little bees on it. I'm not wearing the matching coat, though. The hat might have been a gift from my maternal grandmother. I say that because it was not something my mom would have chosen for my coloring, but Effa Dale liked blues and lavenders. My brother wears a little blue cap. He is two, and I am almost five. We are holding the begonias given to children at First Plymouth Congregational in the hallway after the Easter service. Just thinking of it brings the scent of clay pots with nursery dirt, the feel of purple florist foil paper, and the sound of high heels on the stone floor of the hallway. My sister was only seven months old.

Over the phone she tells me how the hats are still in perfect condition, then surprises me by saying she was always so envious of my Easter bonnet. That blue hat with the big bow became HERS, probably by Easter 1961. I reverted to my original bonnet, which looked like a one-layer round cake frosted in fancy pleats of white chiffon, and accented with black velvet ties. The ties were more like a stuffed cord than a ribbon.

The neighbor girls told me my hat wasn't a real and proper Easter hat, as it wasn't straw, pastel, ribboned, or flowered. I was always very self-conscious wearing it, and secretly wished I could wear the more normal blue hat with flowers. My sister wore the blue hat because she got blue eyes, and I wore the black and white hat because I didn't. That was how I saw it. I think it was also that she had such a square jaw as a little kid that the big bow was pretty darling softening the bossy look.

How strange. I always thought I was the sister who had to wear pink because I didn't look good enough in blue. "Purple and blue," Mom told me, "accentuate the dark circles under your eyes." Turquoise was the only blue for me.

There was one Easter when we didn't wear the bonnets. Mom made us look-alike spring coats with little hats that looked like inverted tulips. Mary Jane's was light blue, of course. Mine was a pale yellow. I only remember the coat in black and white like a photo, but I know it was yellow because my Barbie had a coat made from the yellow scraps. Barbie didn't get a tulip hat, probably because of her bouffant hairdo.

For most of my adult life I refused to wear pink in passive-aggressive rebellion. I shied away from turquoise and coral even though I know they do look good on me. I was leery of blues and florals, and avoided purples like the plague. Stripes and plaids, red and greens were what I chose. What strange and ancient limitations we hold tight! I'm breaking free slowly. Nearly fifty, I bought a pink striped shirt, and a blue floral one. What distances over insecurities and old envies...

Fabulous news

2005-03-22T19:36:00.000-06:00

My sister called this morning just as I climbed out of the shower. She says our dad is getting crusty, opinionated, and intolerant again. Praise be! Howie's getting back to normal, our very own troll under the bridge, and we love him for it. [I can't help it. The little kids are acting out the Three Billy Goats Gruff this week.] Dad has enough energy to be pissed off, to tell it like he sees it, to follow his own motto, "Don't Hold Back", to be the guy with the long perspective on our current short-sighted, self-serving administration, not to mention cuss the jerks who drive too fast in his neighborhood.

It was great to hear, and fun to share the excitement with her. I had to get ready for work, though, so I was trying to get dressed while holding the phone and talking. It is very tricky to pull jeans onto two legs using only one hand, and just forget about zipping. I felt an almost physical blow to my chest as an awareness dawned of all the young soldiers being so glad to be alive but missing arms and legs...The old people whose villages were bombed or shelled "by mistake"...The child victims of land mines...So many people who will never put two legs into a pair of pants using both hands to zip.

The Three Sillies was my favorite folktale as a kid. It features a memorable Silly who hangs his trousers on the dresser drawer knobs at night, and makes many running attempts to jump into them in the morning. What about the Sillies who decided we should run and jump into Iraq????

Thank heaven for an old fart with enough gusto to rant and shake a finger.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

2005-03-21T22:18:00.001-06:00

Got my hair chopped short over spring break. The perm I had at Thanksgiving was okay, but now it was time to get back to the real me. Like most of my contemporaries, I could spend a thousand bucks easy on psychotherapy for my hair issues alone.

Came home from the Walk-Ins Welcome salon, and looked in the mirror. Fritzi looked back at me. My always slender face has become quite round. For forty-nine years I resembled my dad, and suddenly, I am the spitting image of my mom.

I could do worse. Mom's photo shines with enjoyment of the moment. Compare it to my scary anorexic-wannabe photo from 1989. Anxiety is the only vibe from the Ghost Dance photo sending out an SOS. I wore that little black dress twice. Somehow, I don't want to fit in it again!

Extreme dreaming

2005-03-19T19:57:00.000-06:00

A young student in a difficult family crisis created this lovely picture when we painted to music. It seems like a road map for my dreams this week. My brain is working overtime in parking garages, subways, golf carts, race tracks, and Intensive Care. I wake up exhausted, wishing I had eight hours to decipher the dreams, to run parallel with my eight hours at work.

Sam-I-am in clover

2005-03-15T22:49:00.000-06:00

I would not could not at the play. I will not will not Tom DeLay.

It's Ides day again, but time is playing tricks on me. Beware of hidden emotional quick sand and tar pits. Teaching five year olds makes me feel like Alice big and small. I don't know how they got off on the subject of mothers dying. Under intense cross examination I explained with remarkable composure that my mother had died two months ago. "Was that before you were born?" Well, no, that wouldn't work quite right! Did she "pass off?" No, that's in soccer, not Mayo.

The older girls on the block when I was growing up preached the gospel of the news-worthy four-leaf clover and daisy chain. Fame would be ours if we could just find the perfect four-leaf clover. If individual fame proved elusive, we could go for the media discovery of the fabulously long clover chain we were connecting while we sat out on the driveway. We spent a lot of time sitting in the grass looking for the four-leaf clover(no fire ants back there!). We played hide & seek, kick-the-can, or jacks. We jumped rope, and sometimes folded paper "fortune tellers" requiring the selection of favorite car color and predicting our family size. We never were "discovered" by a newspaper reporter.

As for Tom DeLay, he makes me embarrassed to live in Texas. As for the play, it's at Theatre Three. Jeffrey Stanley's play, Medicine Man is about a NASCAR fan whose mother is dying of a mysterious illness. According to the press release, Stanley says the play is, "hopefully universal to anyone who has lost a loved one and hit the boundaries of faith medicine and faith in medicine." I certainly qualify, but just reading the press release brought on weird nightmares.

Four guys, three generations

2005-03-13T16:54:00.000-06:00

My oldest son, Jeff, phoned home a little bit ago to say he had arrived safely in Lincoln, and was now hanging out with his Gramps, aka my dad Howie, his uncle Roger, and his cousin Brian. They are having Harp Ale, Roger's homebrew in honor of Brian's birthday, lots of cheese, and crackers, and probably a major storytelling/bullshitting festival. Perhaps the opportunity will arise for Jeff's two brother's and his younger cousin, Sky to join in a future family stag event. I hope Howie will tell stories about his own dad and brother.

The possibilities are interesting. Our culture lacks male tribal ceremonies. The generations of men do not retreat into the dark recesses to channel the group consciousness and oral history ala Clan of the Cave Bear. Admittedly, I am viewing this event from a female perspective. There seems to be a void instead of a significant ritual or extended dialogue for imparting from one generation to the next what it means to be a truly adult man. Most male "rites of passage" are conducted by peers and involve heavy drinking, hazing, acts of violence or bravado, and dangerous stunts mixing cars and high speed. The television male character is usually a buffoon, an under-achiever, the butt of family jokes, or a strutting rooster showing off his cars, women, and plasma t.v.s for his entourage before his next end-zone dance.

Somewhere in the last half century, the interpretation of the word "respectability" tilted heavily toward the qualities of being conventional, ordinary, boring, and having a recent haircut. What about being able to be respected, being worthy of respect, to merit the esteem, appreciation, and honor of others due to one's manner of conducting life, work, business, and relationships?

These issues apply to both genders. My core feeling is that both my parents made their decisions with consideration of future generations of life on Earth. They made choices and acted so as to be worthy of the respect of previous and future generations. That did not make them slaves to the regard of others or to the conventions of the moment. It made them honorable mature adults with clear moral compasses and a long-range perspective on actions and consequences.

May my sons be as worthy of esteem.

Fuzzy snapshots

2005-03-10T19:27:00.000-06:00

Snapshot photos are deteriorating, yellowing, in the photo albums under the clear "protective" film. They aren't held in place by little photo corners purchased at the Ben Franklin for a quarter like my first albums. The 1965 photos from my Kodak Brownie Starmite camera are still clear. Snapshots of Grandma, her house, her older sister, Myrtle, Camp Fire Girl cook-outs, and slumber parties when we packed our nightgowns in our moms' Samsonite cosmetic cases are all well-preserved. How bizarre. We thought nothing of taking a bubble bath, three nine-year-old girls in a tub back then. We would bake a cake, lick the beaters, or eat tuna fish sandwiches and watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents...

These yellowed photos are more recent; color Kodaks from the summer of 1985 taken on a visit to hotter-than-hell Tyler, Texas. My brother was back from England with his wife and small son. My sister, mother, two sons and I drove down from Nebraska to see them. We arrived in Tyler, and went to McDonald's. Jeff, approaching his third birthday, tried to slide down the metal slippery slide in his little Carters outfit. Yow! It was hotter than McDonald's coffee, but in a less litigious era. The snapshots look like they were baked on that slippery slide like Jeff's little legs. Just remembering nursing the four-month-old Danger Baby in the backseat of the car parked on the asphalt at the Paris, Texas, DQ overheats a mama.

Who are those young, skinny people in the hazy photos?

Tomorrow I will drive across Oklahoma to find a college for a son who wasn't even born when this photo album was arranged. Sunday, Jeff will meet up with my brother and nephew at my dad's house. I hope they will take snapshots, make memories, and stay off the slippery slides.

Butter Tarts

2005-03-10T16:17:00.000-06:00

Coming home from coffee with friends today, I kept thinking I should get the recipe for delicious butter tarts for Fritzi. She could make it for the bridge club ladies. That got me pretty choked up when reality kicked in. I will still get the recipe from JJ. Maybe you know some bridge club ladies who would enjoy a tasty, warm, buttery and sweet treat with coffee.

JJ got the recipe from her granny-in-law who lived in a rural Louisiana house with no plumbing and seven or eleven sons. With no plumbing, seven wouldn't be much different than eleven. Probably had kerosene lamps. Told her sons scary tales of the Red Eye, or loup-garou lurking in the bayous at night.

Fritzi always said her nose was crooked because of kerosene lamps. She bent over to light a match on the wooden floor of their farmhouse (only five kids, no indoor plumbing), and hit her nose on the back of a kitchen chair. My nose is crooked because of riding a saucer sled over a retaining wall. Sent my nephew an old, old lantern recently, to play Wild West or Lewis and Clark. I forget how his dad got a crooked nose, but we will all say a deviated septum is a low-level aggravation in the big scheme of things, but worth the effort of avoiding.

On my dad's side of the family there are also wise words on the subject of noses. He had an aunt, or maybe great-aunt, who used to holler out her screen door to approaching children, "You can come in if your nose is clean!" Teaching preschoolers in winter often reminds me of that saying, even if I can't use it.

The little grey-green bird returns

2005-03-06T18:00:00.000-06:00

Did some dirt therapy yesterday, fussing and digging in my little patio container garden. Planted two miniature rose bushes from Home Depot because one I received as a gift has proven so hardy and bloomed often. That one was pale pink. The new ones are red and coral.

I want to have fewer containers this year, and only terra cotta ones. Dumped out the white plastic flower pots back along the fence. This morning the little grey green bird returned to fuss and dig around in the myrtle looking for bugs in the dumped and dug up dirt. It's a very little bird, about four inches in length. The closest image in my bird guidebook is an immature Tennessee warbler. The bars on the wings aren't prominent, and the bird doesn't have a yellow rump.

I walked the Katy Trail with my exercise buddy today. We have been talking about doing this for at least a year. On our walk we met a bird watcher. I told her about my mystery bird, and she asked about the yellow rump. No yellow rump. The bird watcher suggested my bird was probably a pine warbler. Maybe so. My feeling is still that the little bird is a link to Fritzi, a message of hope and love. I have such a powerful connection to Mom flow through me when I see this little bird.

In one of my dreams this week I came upon a row of bushes with purple leaves. Red-spotted purple butterflies were floating and landing briefly on the purple bushes. My dream self stood and watched them, and I had a powerful sense of my mother beside me but unseen also enjoying this beautiful scene. Recalling my dream images, I am surprised to find the dream had a scent of warm dust, wild flowers, and an undefinable essence of Estes Park, Colorado!

A white cabbage butterfly floated about the emerging redbuds as we walked the trail today, but it is still early for most butterflies. The mourning cloak butterfly is usually one of the earliest in the spring. I am not wearing a mourning cloak. How could I when Fritzi is so close, reminding me to look for new life in my own backyard?

Fears For Tears

2005-03-02T18:36:00.000-06:00

Tears are such scary things to women of my preferred label vintage. We try so hard to manage our homes, careers, children, elderly parents, money, health, weight, relations with spouses or exes, communications with extended family or in-laws. Tears seem uncontrollable, so we fear and loathe them, as Hunter S. Thompson might have written if he had a sex-change operation in Las Vegas.

Nearly every woman I know is in this strange region of caring for others, loss, and grief. It is exhausting emotional work, but we are afraid to let our emotions do their best work. We shut them down, when they can serve us best by flooding.

The ancient Egyptians knew the annual flood of the Nile provided the fertile growth. A flood of tears can move us into a new growth of creativity, sensitivity, and awareness. It's a new experience for me, and I resisted it to my utmost. I'm pleased to find it is making me a richer human being, and a better teacher, too. Letting the tears flow doesn't remove the loss or lessen our honor of our parent or relative. Letting the tears flow irrigates and energizes us to use our loss. It makes us more approachable and inspiring adults. The tears let us unload many large black yard-size trashbags of unimportant garbage from the mildewed cardboard storage boxes in our worry-laden emotional basements.

Shoo Fly Pie And Apple Pan Dowdy

2005-03-02T17:59:00.000-06:00

Lisa, Dad's next door neighbor, brought over a huge pan of apple pan dowdy in the first few days after Mom passed away. We had some other pie, so my sister and I divided the apple pan dowdy into many freezer containers for Dad to enjoy for bedtime snacks. He is still enjoying it many evenings like last night. You can't help singing the song, and it does put you in a happy mood:

If you wanna do right by your appetite,
If you're fussy about your food,
Take a choo-choo today, head New England way,
And we'll put you in the happiest mood. with:
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy
Makes your eyes light up,
Your tummy say "Howdy."
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy
I never get enough of that wonderful stuff.
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan dowdy makes the sun come out
When Heavens are cloudy,
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy,
I never get enough of that wonderful stuff!
Mama! When you bake,
Mama! I don't want cake;
Mama! For my sake
Go to the oven and make some ever lovin' Sh,
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy
Makes your eyes light up,
Your tummy say "Howdy,"
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy
I never get enough of that wonderful stuff!

(words by Sammy Gallop; music by Guy Wood)
Best selling records in 1946 by Dinah Shore (Columbia); Stan Kenton and His Orchestra (Capitol); and Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians (Decca).

(Recipes for Apple Pan Dowdy)

In the very, very olden days I was an only child. This would be 1955-1958. After that I became the very, very big girl big sister, a title I still hold. (They can't take that away from me!) Both of these roles conveyed certain privileges and responsibilities*. In the beginning, the main privilege was staying up very late, after 8:00 p.m. CST, to watch the "Dinah Shore Chevy Show" on the little black and white t.v., and to eat Skyline Dairy Swiss Almond ice cream with my parents. Ms. Shore used to end her show by singing, "See the USA in your Chevrolet", swirling about in her Barbie fashion dress, and then tossing me a big kiss. Our car was a Chevrolet, a pea-green 1954 to be exact, and even if we weren't seeing much of the USA in those days, I knew this t.v. show was being sent directly to me in the egocentric way a preschooler understands the world. The "Dinah Shore Show" went off the air in 1963, about the time Roberts Dairy purchased Skyline Dairy. After that the ice cream just wasn't as good. President Kennedy was assassinated, and then the Great Alaskan Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 changed my world view. Television wasn't about me. It was about "stuff out there" as reported by Walter Cronkite.

*If you can remember the gravity with which Bert Parks explained the responsibility of the Miss America runner-up to take over if Miss America should be unable to fulfill her duties, you will understand that I seriously believed from age three that I might have to take charge should my parents be unable to complete their duties as parents for my younger siblings.

They Can't Take That Away From Me
(Written by George and Ira Gershwin)

There are many many crazy things
That will keep me loving you
And with your permission
May I list a few
The way you wear your hat
The way you sip your tea
The memory of all that
No they can’t take that away from me
The way your smile just beams
The way you sing off key
The way you haunt my dreams
No they can’t take that away from me
We may never never meet again, on that bumpy road to love
But I’ll always, always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced till three
The way you changed my life
No they can’t take that away from me

The Big File

2005-02-25T13:52:00.000-06:00

Housework is not a time-consuming chore when it is done a little bit every day and no unsightly mildewed confusion is ever allowed to grow. In much the same way, studying mathematics is a manageable endeavor as long as one does the homework everyday and never gets behind or fails to have a confusing concept promptly explained. I used to be a pretty good math student, and even expected to major in math and minor in actuarial science in college. That didn't happen, I ended up an art major, and then I became a pretty good homemaker.

The last few years the whole housework discipline has escaped me. I can't always balance my checkbook the first time through. Things pile up; stacks of bills, piles of files, stacks of unsorted images torn from magazines that I use for teaching, images I used in class last summer but didn't refile, other stacks of the papers I use for my collages, lots and lots of letters, clipped newspaper columns from Leon Satterfield and Molly Ivins, "Get Fuzzy", "Zits" and "One Big Happy" comics, small appliance owner's manuals, old report cards and team rosters and drink schedules.

My friends know that when I finally embark on The Big Clean, The Big Cook, or The Big Iron, I will be off the radar for at least two days. They know I am jousting with dust bunnies the size of Abyssinian cats, or blowing fuses in the kitchen. They probably don't know the ugly truth about The Big File, however.

The Big File is like being sucked down Alice's Rabbit Hole. I keep painting myself into a smaller and smaller circle until I am kneeling in a spiral of paper stacks. When the phone rings my legs are too cramped for me to scramble up and answer before the voice mail kicks in. I'm very close to running out of file folders, and the file cabinet drawers are crammed to overflowing.

Fritzi's letters and lots of other correspondence had been saved in a Rubbermaid shoebox since I moved to this condo in 2000. They hadn't settled into neat and tidy strata, however. I spent a good hour arranging the letters by date this afternoon. I hadn't saved all of Mom's letters, and I didn't use any clear specifications when saving or discarding. I especially want to read through the last two years some other day. I think it will be a very positive experience, but I can't do it right now. I have all those other pictures stacked all over the floor, and I can't walk in my room.

As kids we had some plastic circle gizmos for fanning out and managing a hand of playing cards. That is what I need now on a much larger scale. I saw the Texas Ballet Theater's Jayme Autrey Griffith performing the classic Don Quixote fan dance last weekend. Why can't I flick this semicircle of files in a coquetish manner?

Interestingly, I received a letter from my aunt today that included a delightful letter my mom had written her a couple years back. Mom was dealing out the full update on all her kids and grandkids and travels. It was fun to read. I feel sorry for people who have no pen pals. A long-lasting written relationship is a fabulous gift. Now I just have to figure out how to get out of my "wheelie" home office chair without rolling over any of the stacks!

Hung up in the decisions

2005-02-22T20:16:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I gave my dad permission that he didn't need (but seemed to want) to buy a small electric skillet with a non-stick surface on sale at Shopko. Apparently my mom did not approve of non-stick surfaces. My sister and I discovered the current electric skillet in their kitchen is quite large, uncoated, and doesn't work worth diddly. My mom was a wonderful person, but she had very black/white opinions on absolutely everything from the most trivial on up. If you lived with someone for fifty-five years who told you to cut the ring of sausage into 3/16" pieces to fry for breakfast, you might find yourself a bit adrift. Dad may find he is free to make quite different choices now. He may also find that lots of choices aren't nearly so earth-shakingly important anymore. How important is it???

It was a huge relief to me when someone commented about one of my agonized decisions, that the selection would "never be seen from a galloping horse." Fritzi had the gift of knowing what made her really happy. I hope through all this grief we can find some peace in making easy choices about the small stuff, and find some clarity about what's really the big stuff.

Emotional weather changeable without warning

2005-02-21T20:58:00.000-06:00

After a couple weeks of being calm and philosophical, I started to think I was "coming out of the intense grief". Instead, I was about to become the target of torrential meatballs and mudslides:

Tuesday--My hard shell has been penetrated and my cold core altered by the wonderful thoughtfulness and generosity of friends and family. My body seems light and aerated. My energy is really high when I'm teaching. My students find me more open, accepting, soft, and huggable. The phrase "permeable membrane" keeps popping into my consciousness. Had to get out the dictionary, of course. Permeate... to pass through the openings and interstices, to spread and flow throughout, diffuse... Clearly not a scientist. All the plants I grew in Dixie cups for Biol 101 lab died. Does permeability allow for flow both in and out?

Thursday--I've been just exhausted this week, and don't really know why. Feel like I'm on a planet with much more gravity. I'm being triple-teamed by hayfever, hormones, and grief. My head is stuffed with Brillo pads. On the drive home from work this afternoon, in the time spent just waiting for a red light, I became absolutely furious that Modern Medicine failed Fritzi, and indirectly failed everyone I love. Perhaps I had tried to sidestep that phase of grief, so it waited to hit when I wasn't looking.

Saturday--Answered the doorbell with tears streaming down my cheeks and didn't even care. Writing notes to people who have been so kind, sharing happy memories about my mother, and about times our families shared when I was growing up. 100% chance of precipitation. At the door a neighbor waits to give me a handheld vacuum. I appreciate the gift and the distraction. I sent my oldest back to grad school with the Dust-Buster, so I've got stairway crevices and corners that look really gritty.

Sunday--Went wandering through Stein Mart just looking at clothes and colors. Never even tried anything on. Senses of time, urgency, purpose all suspended. I haven't done this kind of numb wandering in the nearly nine years since my divorce. I felt quite refreshed, except for my sinuses. Listened to Stevie Ray Vaughan's "The Sky is Crying" twice.

Monday--Still don't know about permeability, but I dreamt of energy moving in and out of me as I was connected into a huge stream of people traveling on a huge airport moving-walkway. The energy looked like bubbles, or like Steven's photos of glass marbles. Very peaceful and clear, really.

20/20 at Twenty

2005-02-18T19:34:00.000-06:00

My middle son is turning twenty today. I gave him a call, but he was at work and couldn't talk long. He'd received my cookie care package, and a card from Gramps. We talked about so many emotions running so close to the surface these days.

This son has 20/20 vision. He has a keen view to his future, a thrifty and hardworking plan for the present, and a deep emotional connection to his family that pleases and supports us all.

I think he got his clear vision just before birth. Second pregnancy, arrangements all planned out for little Jeffrey at the neighbor's, Lamaze choo-choo train breathing, and nothing to do but wait. If this kid didn't pop out in a day or two, my OB/GYN would induce labor. As he said, "There are too many people in your body."

The nurses had me racing laps through the corridors in my breezy hospital gown and pushing my IV stand. I was becoming convinced of the positives of arriving fashionably late! And then, adding insult to injury, the teaching hospital sent a med student who looked about twelve years old to test my vision.

I never got a happy face sticker after my eye test, but I eventually got a bouncing baby boy.

Lavender

2005-02-12T18:54:00.000-06:00

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are King, dilly dilly,
I shall be Queen

Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so

Call up your friends, dilly, dilly,
Set them to work
Some to the plough, dilly dilly,
Some to the fork

Some to the hay, dilly dilly,
Some to thresh corn
Whilst you and I, dilly dilly,
Keep ourselves warm

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are King, dilly dilly,
I shall be Queen

Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?'
Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so

I'm being guided by lavender. I walked into Mervyn's through the children's department. On the forty per cent off table there were pairs of lavendar sparkly fairy wings. I sensed I needed to get them for our summer fairy camp, if not for my own personal use.

Moving on through the mall, I found a fabulous lavender and black top to go with my "dress-up" black skirt, and on sale. I 've spent forty-five years as an anti-purple person. Purple made the dark circles under my eyes prominent, and never went with my brunette hair. Plus, the whole idea of purple paisley polyester double-knit made me irritable.

When my sister and I got into the closet and drawers in the spare bedroom we found Mom's jewelry box, her mother-of-the-bride/groom outfits, my sister's blue-ribbon 4H sewing projects, and Mom's personal favorites from her long sewing life. We found the all-time grooviest outfit I ever wore. Mom created it for me from 1970's Marimekko fabric. The cotton/linen print had huge waves of black, sand, lavender, and white. Mom designed my outfit to have bell-bottom pants that Judy Carne and Goldie Hawn would kill for. Then she made a knee-length buttoned vest to go over them.

Mary Jane and I gasped when we found it. The outfit was even more impressive than we remembered. I wish I could fit in it, now that Marimekko is back in style. I also wish I could find the awesome gold and lavender floral print corduroy Nehru dress Mom made me in junior high. That's the trouble with retro. You never know what to save until it's too late!

I wore the new lavender top to the Texas Ballet Theater's performance called "Five of Hearts" at the Bass Performance Hall in Ft. Worth. I wore Mom's large mother-of-pearl pin and her mother's mother-of-pearl pinkie ring. Lavender looks surprisingly nice with my graying hair. Crap. I'm turning into my grandmothers!

Writing thank you notes

2005-02-08T20:56:00.000-06:00

Fritzi brought me up right to write thank you notes promptly and feel really guilty if I didn't. How funny that she still nags me, albeit gently, in a way that will urge me toward health.

I have a list of wonderful people/friends/family/generous souls to write, thanking each of them for their memorial gifts to the museum fund. In the other-dimension first week after Mom's death, I wrote many thank yous. The process was extremely healing. Each small inky verbalization of explanation, sadness, and gratitude was a step in my acceptance of the reality, an expression of true appreciation for the gifts and thoughtful givers, and a powerful impetus toward recalling more pleasant memories and images of my mother.

Now, after a couple weeks attempting to resume "normal life", I find myself dreading the small written meditations in gratitude, memory, and grief that I know deep-down will be healing. It's the renewed verbalizing of the experience that frightens me. Repeating words clarifies the ordeal, but also limits and sets the experience in stone. Still, I would be verbalizing the experience from a different spot than that in the recent/distant time. I'm at a different roadside scenic turn-out, overlooking a vista where a cataclysmic event wiped out life as we know it. The lava cooled into solid and sharp stones. The landscape was gradually reforested. Aren't the wildflowers gorgeous, especially the tiny pale blue star-shaped ones? Perhaps pressing death and loss into a block, a concrete cornerstone and setting it in our gut is how we go forward, although slower, heavier, and leaning a bit more to one side.

Coming out of the fog

2005-02-05T15:21:00.000-06:00

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems (1916) "Fog"
US biographer & poet (1878 - 1967)

It's always exciting when I find a useful site for finding word derivations, definitions, quotations, urban legends, etc. Deep down I'm still the library Information Desk lady:

fog
1544, from Dan. fog "spray, shower, snowdrift," related to O.N. fok "snow flurry." The word meaning "long grass" (c.1300) may be a different word, but the two may connect via a notion of long grass growing in moist dells of northern Europe. Phrase in a fog "at a loss what to do" first recorded 1602. Foggy Bottom "U.S. Department of State," from the name of a marshy region of Washington, D.C., where many federal buildings are (also with a punning allusion to political murkiness) popularized 1947 by James Reston in "New York Times," but he said it had been used earlier by Edward Folliard of "The Washington Post."

In a fog best describes the past two weeks. I functioned pretty well at work, but when I got home I was still at a loss what to do. During the five months of my mother's illness many tasks became too unimportant and/or too overwhelming to tackle. I was focused on helping my dad cope as best I could long-distance, putting interesting stories and things in the mail to amuse my mom, and keeping the rest of the family informed. I didn't clean or iron, rarely cooked or watered the houseplants, sometimes failed to open the mail the day it arrived. I didn't file the images and materials I use for teaching. Often I didn't help my youngest son deal with his college search and application process. On the plus side, I did keep the washer, dryer, and dishwasher running, and I did a lot of writing to preserve a little sanity.

Feel like I crossed through a gate this week, and not an airport security gate, either. I've started cleaning the condo. Yesterday I began turning my middle son's bedroom into a guest room that my dad can use when he comes to visit. My middle son will attend summer school at Tech. My eldest is in grad school. It's time to get real. Neither of them are actually likely to live here again. That bedroom had become the sculpture studio for my youngest, and the depository of orphaned automotive items, a dusty museum to the frequently dashed hopes of teen auto ownership.

Floormats from the Batmobile.

Today I moved all the photo albums into an emptied bookshelf in that bedroom, along with all the free-floating snapshots that need to be albummed. Then I allowed myself to just sit and watch a movie. I've always been leisure-challenged, and that tendency had worsened through the autumn as my stress increased. A wise and dear friend had sent me a DVD of "The Producers" with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, one of my all-time favorites. After that I went to Kohl's to replace my kitchen towels that were so horribly disfigured in the tragic X-Drano kitchen sink episode the day my mother died.

I have a plan for dealing with the backlog of filing and organizing. Little tasks are becoming a celebration of life instead of cement overshoes. My dad talks through his accomplishments when we visit. I will have some of my own to report next time.

A small grey-green bird in the myrtle

2005-02-02T19:43:00.000-06:00

There's a tiny bird wiggling the leaves of the myrtle on my little back patio to catch my eye. Sometimes it perches on the rim of one of the flowerpots where I planted some better-late-than-never pansies last weekend. It fusses about in the loose dirt. Fritzi would know exactly what kind of bird it is. I can't find it in my Birds of North America field guide. As I search through the warblers and vireos, I discuss the identification process with Mom. She feels very close, but doesn't tell me the answer, even when the little bird disappears still unnamed.

Such fun times we had watching birds in the backyard, or trying to identify birds by long distance phone calls and letters. While I was in Lincoln I remembered the strange bright morning after a big snowstorm in the Sixties when we had a confused snowy owl in one of the pine trees. A snowy owl has no business being in Nebraska, but there it was. Neither do pelicans, but we saw one of those once as well. Not so very long ago some cute small owls made a nest in a hole in the maple tree next to my folks' patio, and raised a family of owlets. I think it must have been about 1999, as I got to see some of the baby owls perched on the street light out front and in the locust tree when I was home with my boys. Watching and listening for the owls, and learning more about them was fun for all of us.

Mike has written my dad about his memories of a special trip together to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo to visit the jungle exhibit. I bet it was during that same trip home in 1999, right after I bought the little Buick. Fritzi shared many wonderful visits with us to the Henry Doorly Zoo when my boys were little. It was a precious gift that we lived in Omaha, just sixty miles from Lincoln, and could spend so many days together. The aviary is still one of my favorite places in the world. Fritzi even overcame some squeamishness to enjoy picnic lunches in the aviary with her grandsons.

Tomorrow Steven will meet with the chair of the art department at the University of New Mexico. I think it would be a terrific place for Steven to go to college. The chairman's bio says he was influenced by the teaching of Richard Diebenkorn. My oils professor at UN-L long ago was also influenced by Diebenkorn, so I was influenced indirectly. I got to share a Richard Diebenkorn retrospective at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art with Fritzi and my dad. What a splendid day that was! I was stunned to look back and find the exhibit was in 1998. Six years seems like yesterday. Fritzi was in heaven spending a morning at her much-loved Kimbell Museum viewing Renoir's portraits with her grandchildren, a lunch at La Madeline, and then getting much more excited about the Diebenkorn exhibit than she had expected. She was absolutely glowing. I'm glad she got to see the new Modern building more recently.

I experience these memories now without tears for the most part. Fritzi wasn't glamorous. She was much like the tiny grey-green bird with the bright black eye. She was lucky to know exactly what gave her the most joy; grandchildren, art, good food, letters, polite golfers, and two beers with conversation before dinner every evening with my dad for fifty-five years. Today I feel Fritzi's telling me to focus on what gives me joy and eliminate most of the rest.

1947 - "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South
Music by Allie Wrubel
Lyric by Ray Gilbert

Chorus:
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actual
Ev'rything is satisfactual
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day, yes sir!

Chorus

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actual
Ev'rything is satisfactual
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, feeling this way

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It is the truth, it's actual... huh?
Where is that bluebird? Mm-hm!
Ev'rything is satisfactual
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day.

Zipping the doo-dad

2005-01-30T19:43:00.000-06:00

Over the years my dad has had many golf buddies. Many of them became honorary members of our extended family. We grew up memorizing their slightly off-color jokes, bringing them cold Buds, and helping my mom make pastrami sandwiches and popcorn for the returning heroes. Sometimes we were acquainted with their families, and sometimes not.

Mom was especially fond of Dick and his wife Pat. Pat was a very gracious hostess, and Dick is a no pretense, genuinely kind and generous human, and a funny low level bull storyteller. I think that storyteller quality is prominent in the long line of Dad's golf buddies.

Dick showed up one of the first nights we were home and grieving. He sat there telling tales of neighborhood escapades over several decades while we ate roast pork tenderloin and sauerkraut. He told of a couple in one of his supper or bridge clubs where the husband was advancing into Alzheimers. After an evening together, the husband couldn't zip his parka, so Dick tried to help. The Alzheimers guy whopped him upside the head, thinking Dick was trying to grab his doo-dad. This story was one that help jump start us out of our numbness.

Another golf buddy and his wife showed up and told us the story of the traveling transgender pheasant. One of their kids that we grew up with turned into a respectable dentist (which is really amazing). When the son bought out a retiring dentist's practice he inherited a stuffed pheasant.

For over twenty years the dentist and his siblings have been mailing and shipping the pheasant across the country for special occasions. The pheasant has been dressed up as a Thanksgiving turkey and an award-winning band director in a custom uniform with epaulettes. It has gone through post 9/11 airline security in a bride's gown, then gone on a honeymoon with the bride's gown and veil in a pheasant-size hanging travel bag. I know it sounds crazy, but placing the image of the transgender pheasant in our mind, and making us laugh until root beer shot out our nostrils was one of the most healing gifts we received.

Visualizing a safe place

2005-01-29T18:47:00.000-06:00

Through the stress and loss of the last few months I've had some trouble sleeping. I'm thankful for the various experiences of Twelve-stepping, journaling, counseling, painting, photographing, talking, and sharing that helped me build coping skills. Over fifteen years ago some self-help book or group suggested choosing a place where I felt very safe, creative, calm, and energized to use in centering exercises.

I hadn't thought about the Martin Park Nature Center in years. It's in Oklahoma City west of Edmond where we lived in the late Eighties. I shared the park with my family and with Cub Scouts, but I also spent time there alone when my small children went to Mother's Day Out. I drew and painted, hiked, and just sat quietly on cold stones watching fall leaves float by in the creek. I ate my sandwich and watched a heron catch lunch. My paintings show the anxiety I felt in those years, but I remember a calm awareness of one particular bend in the creek with softshell turtles on the red clay banks. When I went Googling I didn't find a photo of this particular place in the park. Perhaps it is my Brigadoon. When I needed the memory of a safe place this week the memory resurfaced thanks to the practice of a different time.

I hope you have a special safe place to visualize when the time arises.

Fritzi

2005-01-23T18:32:00.000-06:00

August 7, 1928 - January 14, 2005

My mother passed away January fourteenth at Mayo Clinic. At some point I hope to fill in more of the story in this blog. Perhaps it will be of use to someone else in a similar situation. Or perhaps it will just help me get through.

Peter, Paul, & Mommy

2005-01-13T22:51:00.000-06:00

I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor, and I don't like it very much! I'm feeling overwhelmed and squeezed. And I'm definitely out of balance with the forces of cosmic digestion and elimination.

The kitchen sink is clogged. Both sides are full of creepy-looking formerly turkey soup. While digging around in the freezer this morning for a leftover to reheat at lunch, I encountered a large container of frozen soup that looked especially unappetizing. I upended the container in the sink above the disposal to melt, and asked my son to please run it down the disposal if he stopped by the condo later in the day.

I don't know exactly what he did or when, but now I have this special bonus mess! I see a plumber in my crystal ball, as the Liquid Plumber Foaming Snake isn't doing any good. Oh, gee! He's up to my knee! Oh, heck! He's up to my neck!

Mom's intestines have been a foaming snake for nearly five months. Sure hope a visit from my sister will be a boost for Mom and for Dad, too.

Waste management and celebrity status

2005-01-10T21:25:00.000-06:00

I gotta tell you, it's tough being in the public eye all the time. For quite some time now my mom's every stool has been collected and analyzed because enquiring minds want to know. Now she's got dermatologists popping in to photograph her bare midriff like she's Madonna or Princess Di. Seems she's got a rash with a complementary color scheme. Not as good as a grilled cheese sandwich of the Virgin Mary, but still a lead story on a slow news day.

Celebrity media scrutiny has extended to the next generation. I've got people sorting through my trash looking for the Rummy's conscience and Diet Pepsi cans. Yes, indeed, the city's own commercial environmental waste diversion specialists are going to do an on-site evaluation (waste audit) of my trash/potential recyclables. This needs to be done several times since the container contents fluctuate from week to week. A dear demented friend sent one of my email diatribes about the state of recycling in multi-family dwellings off to a college friend who happened to be a city councilman who sent it on to the city manager who sent it to the special services coordinator who handed it off to the commercial diversion dude. And now I'm a member of the Green Team. I hope my wardrobe doesn't malfunction like a hospital gown.

My mom can be an honorary member of the Green Team. She has just completed a 72-hour waste collection study, and the docs at Mayo weren't looking for her autograph to sell on EBay.

I guess my fifteen minutes of fame came just after the birth of my first son in a teaching hospital. Six med students arrived in my delivery room to watch my OB/Gyn embroider my episiotomy. Smile. You're on candid camera.

Mobil Travel Guides

2005-01-09T19:30:00.000-06:00

When I was about twelve my parents got a copy of the Mobil Travel Guide for our part of the country. I spent hours sitting in our treehouse pouring over the book planning vacations our family would never take. I wrote lots of 3x5 notecards about travel destinations and accomodations in Minnesota.

Now my parents are in Minnesota. My sister has some experience with Minnesota having taught there for 2-3 years in the Eighties. My main muse grew up in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, and knows the ins and outs of the shopping Dales.

With all this travel advice I still have to fall back on my own experience. I asked Dad today how his no-frills motel compared to the Blue Fox. That was the motel where our auto mechanic sent us in the summer of 1966. Dad said his motel is better, but mainly because it's just him, not a family of five in the same sort of space. I have a postcard from the Blue Fox Motel. "Located five miles north of downtown Colorado Springs on Highway 85-85, near the Air Force Academy. New, completely modern, catering to the family trade."

My memories of the Blue Fox are hazy, but my memories of our extended stay in Colorado Springs are clear. The mere scent of Tang transports me back to the mornings spent playing house among the boulder in the city's Palmer Park above a golf course. That flashback is reinforced by either the smell of waxy Dixie cups or dry Cheerios. I had a hint that our vacation had gone kaput, but I was having a fabulous time spending each morning in this pleasant park. One evening we went over and played. When it started to rain we sat in the car and had cheese and crackers. The rainbow was beautiful. It was a very restful spot.

This is my contemporaneous witness report of our visit to Pikes Peak in 1966:

If the North Pole hadn't been such a flop we wouldn't have gone up Pikes Peak and all our trobles [sic] would never have occured [sic]. After entering the highway we took a long drive up the mountain. When we got up it was so foggy we couldn't see anything. We entered a large building that smelled of donuts and hotdogs. I nearly was sick. We had a hotdog and some pop. I bought a postcard and Dad bought a little tree for Aunt Em. We each got a little button that said "I made it. Pikes Peak." [I still have mine.] Then we went outside to look at the Pikes Peak railroad tracks. Since there was nothing to look at we started down.

After awhile we heard this real awful noise. Dad was afraid it was the brakes. I held on so tight and I was afraid to look. As soon as we got to a station we stopped and a man checked and put in some transmittion [sic] fluid. When we finally got down we went to Cave of the Winds. It was beautiful and our guide was real funny. We had our dinner at the Flying W Ranch. My piano teacher recommended it. We had a wonderful time. First we looked around at a mine and the blacksmith shop. Supper was delicious. I had two helpings. Then the cowboys entertained us with cowboy songs. After that we went back to the trading post to get some little carved donkeys...Then we went back to our motel.

The one fun thing about wrecking the transmittion [sic] was we got to use a bright red rented car. One day we decided to go to Royal Gorge It wasn't to [sic] away. When we got there we looked around and decided to take the inclined R.R. It was fun. While we were at the bottom a train went by. When we went back up we drove across the bridge and had coney dogs and pop (or beer) at the restraunt[sic]

Therapies for control freaks

2005-01-09T15:45:00.000-06:00

You've probably noticed that I handle problems, crises, and emotions by taking notes on the facts and then writing about facts as best I can understand them. Then I try to find humor somewhere in the situation. It's either a gift or a character flaw, but it's the defense I learned early and always revert to.

Whatever it is, it's the reason I have all these notes to reconstruct the story of my parents' ordeal, and put them in this blog. Therapists would and have reminded me it comes at a price, by limiting the emotional richness and texture of life.

It's scary in the odd moments when the emotions take over. That happened this morning when I learned that a dear friend's father passed away suddenly. In the time it took to read one sentence, I was awash in tears and sniveling all down my shirt. The spigot had been turned on all the tears and fears that have been building up for months.

I named this blog "AnchorWoman" because my parents consider me their anchor. Today reminded me that I am also the tv news anchorwoman who can relate the saddest news event without messing her make-up and then joke with the sports and weather guys.

National Muse Appreciation Day

2005-01-08T19:32:00.001-06:00

Hey, Girl! I love you. How are you doing? Are you remembering to print your name neatly on the upper right-hand corner of all your papers?

Much going on here. The whole Mayo thing is so bizarre as I teach my dad about VISA bills and coin-op washers. So is getting in touch with my mom's side of the family. Playing Mission Control with sibling weirdness is a new challenge. I know--I'm gathering material for my novel!

My high school friend is pushing me to write. I'm not sure just what. Maybe beginning readers with an art class take and wacko projects.

Continue to love and study the operas for this season. "Jenufa" is my favorite, although it is gut-wrenchingly sad.

I know you are lurking out there in cyberspace to occasionally check on my progress like some bizarre Macy's Santa Seismic Tinkerbell. In this role you are using a lot of styling gel and glitter blush. The benevolent attendance monitor resides in Olympus.

What's the news across the nation?

2005-01-08T10:25:00.000-06:00

This is the first time in weeks that Dad has talked about getting the news. The consistent nights of sleep must be helping. While Mom was having a shower and shampoo this morning, he took a banana he'd saved from breakfast and went to the lounge to watch CNN. The St. Mary's patient/visitor library will be open this afternoon. He plans to go up there and read a newspaper. It is warmer, but snowing in Rochester, so he has shelved his plans to ride a city bus to Walmart, thank heavens! And thanks so much to my sister for shipping him some warm mock turtlenecks so he doesn't have to shop. He's mastered the laundry at the motel, but shopping seemed like more than he needed to tackle. I'm very thankful for the extremely knowledgeable and helpful woman at the motel desk, too, for making his life easier.

i was proud of him for his attitude about riding the bus. a can do thing. i sure like him. this has been tough following your mom... what an uphill road... what would she do without your dad? B.

That was the cold fear in my gut when Dad told me his bus plan. I know that he would probably be just fine, but I absolutely, positively need him to be fine. He is our man on site!