Posts Tagged: personal history
October is Over, and Coins
Dividing the Jewelry
My sister wanted to divide my mother’s jewelry on the day Mom died. I mean, the actual evening of the very day, October 30, 2004. I was furious with her for even suggesting it, but she’d first started asking about it on the way up to see Mom. As far as we knew, we were just going up to see our mother in the hospital. We were unaware that this would be the last day of Mom’s life.
On the drive, my sister let me know that she wanted a diamond and emerald ring Mom won in a contest. I wanted to lash out, to shame and excoriate her for even talking about something like that. But I stayed calm.
This was an opportunity, I decided. I could freak out, or I could actually take a moment to calm down and consider what I wanted of my mother’s. After a beat, I said that was fine, if I could have Mom’s wedding set. And that evening, I took it, along with Mom’s watch and a couple of bracelets. I didn’t want them. I wanted Mom, but I knew if I didn’t take what I wanted, my sister would take it all and sell it.
I was right. I had my mother’s diamond put into a new setting, and I wear it every day. The contest ring is gone.
More Division
My dad was anxious to clear Mom’s stuff, but he didn’t want to do it. The rest of this painful dividing up fell to us, and happened after the funeral. We all went back to the house and go to work on the clothing. Once we finished with that, my sister started sniffing around the kitchen, looking for a specific plate that had either flies or bees around the edge, something Mom won at a farm auction in South Dakota in the 1960s.
Dad told us that our younger brother had taken it. “He took that and her rolling pin and the coin collection.”
My sister’s eyes flashed. “I don’t know,” she said in a prim, warning voice. “There were some valuable coins in that collection.”
I shrugged. “Good. I’m happy that he has something of value.” My sister pressed her lips together and said nothing more. This was probably a good thing because I’d have let her have it. I was furious. But that was nothing new. I was furious with my sister around Mom’s death, and it’s true that she could be impossible, but it is also true that I needed to be furious with someone and my sister was an easy target. My brothers and I were so stunned with grief that we could barely function. My sister was not. She was strangely gleeful, and I couldn’t stand it.
Hence, furious.
Other Divisions
But back to the coin collection. Mom had saved coins her entire life, but I sincerely doubt that there was anything valuable in there. If Mom had coins of actual value–those old silver coins with Lady Liberty on them–she’d pawned them. But she still saved coins of perceived value, even if the only perception was her own.
There was something special about going through my change, looking for something Mom would want. I saved half dollars, old nickels and wheat pennies in a special place and took them to her on my frequent visits. Mom accepted with a gleam in her eye, then squirrelled away the coins. I found this delightful.
Mom also saved coins from wherever she went in Europe. Most of those coins weren’t worth much more than face value, but they meant something to Mom. Value and worth are two different things, aren’t they? She liked the acquisition, and I liked the giving. And that was definitely worth something.
October Coins
Mom died 21 years ago. Things were so much different with my sister for more than half of those years. I gave up being furious with her, and she gave up resenting me for being born. There was a new generosity in her heart once her meds were balanced and she was sober. I loved it.
We gave to each other. I gave her money quite often, and gift cards, and rides. I took her thrifting and to lunch and I even took her to Bonnie Raitt a few months before she died. She gave me small things almost every time I saw her. And she gave me the greatest gift she ever could, which was her sobriety. It was what I wanted most from her.
After forty-five years of drinking, my sister would have celebrated fifteen years of sobriety on October 1st of this year. I told her that I’d like to go to a meeting with her to see her get her fifteen-year coin. Now, that would have been a coin of real value. She was so excited to share this with me.
Sweet sister, sweet mother. Two of the most difficult women who ever lived, and also two of the most delightful. I am thinking of them both, and missing them terribly.
On Not Writing
Who is not writing? Me.
When a writer is not writing, it’s generally because she’s doing Other Things. I’ve been not writing. It’s awful. But yes, I’ve been doing other things.
- Taking a long weekend with Sue by the lake. Sue’s husband was out of town seeing his grandkids, so I motored up to see her. We spent the weekend thrifting, bingeing two series (The Essex Serpent, Department Q), eating good food and drinking good coffee, watching her work her fabric artistry, and enjoying the lake from her gorgeous deck. Sue and I had a blast. I also got to have lunch in person with Adrienne, who I haven’t seen in something like nine years. She’s as wonderful as ever.
- Having two weekends in Medford and Ashland to see plays at the Shakespeare Festival. My husband I and stayed in Medford, visited April and Lewis, and saw “Into the Woods”, “Jitney”, and “Quixote Nuevo”. Then, a month later, I went back and stayed with April and Lewis, and April and I went to see “Shane” and “Merry Wives of Windsor”. You will note that of all those five plays, only one is Shakespeare. I can’t account for it, but loved the shows I saw so much that I have no complaints.
- Helping my daughter and grandson move into their new apartment, which is wonderful for them, in part because my grandson is able to join a pack of apartment complex kids after school. My own kids did that until we moved here, to this house that sits in a child drought for some reason. He’s having a blast. I miss them both and see them oh, every day, more or less.
- Returning my guest room to guest room status so I can have people stay here.
- Settling in my office after about twenty years of wishing I could. If you come over to my house and I allow you to see this room (I might not), please have compassion for the introverted girl who moved constantly throughout her childhood and as a result, held onto every scrap of everything she ever owned, every book and bear and doodad and doll, and as she aged still kept these things and thought, “Someday I’ll put that in my office,” and after she stopped moving, she still accumulated things with the thought of putting them “in my office,” and whenever a shelf of doodads got too full, packed it away, to put “in my office.” What I mean is that there is a LOT of stuff in here, and I am as embarrassed by it as I am pleased with it. So be kind.
- Integrating into my home (and office!) the things I took from my sister’s apartment. I thought I was choosy and sparing. I guess I was, but it’s still an enormous amount of stuff to figure out. Right now I am attempting to restore a tiny beanbag kitten she had for her entire life, having gotten it wet, not realizing that in 1957 the beans were made of compressed sawdust instead of plastic, so I had to open a tiny seam and empty out clods of sixty-eight year-old wet sawdust, but I did it and now the dingy, tattered fabric shell of this kitten is soaking in a coffee cup by the sink. This is a tremendous waste of time and effort, but she had it her entire life, through all her moves and losses, and I can’t let it go.
- Watching “Too Much” and finding it moving and beautiful and hilarious.
- Handling enormous feelings of grief and loneliness for my brother and sister, triggered by all the items I have been unpacking and handling. My brother’s only finished novel (it’s in drafts, on paper) is by my desk (I finally get to read it), as are his ashes (I still need to deal with those). My nephew came over and went through the last of what my sister had stored in my garage and took it all away.
- Missing my parents. Mom would have turned 89 this year, so I am finally accepting that she wouldn’t be here even if the cancer hadn’t taken her 21 years ago. Dad would have so much to say about today’s America. I miss them both, and I miss my birth father, who would have had some piercing insights on what this is doing to farmers, especially those who raise soybeans. I miss them and need them and they are not here.
- Cleaning stuff. Sorting stuff. Planning trips with my husband. Seeing local friends.
- Laying down rugs for the first time in a minute. One in the dining room, one in the TV room. We watched my oldest daughter’s dog for a few days so she and her husband could get away for their anniversary, and they warned me that he might mark the rugs. I am proud to announce that he did NOT. What a fine little guy he is.
- Wondering when I’ll start writing again. I miss it.
Top 40 Blues – where is my station?
No more BELA105
So. A Portland radio station went off the air: BELA105. I’m irritated because they played women artists, and my longtime favorite station, KINKFM, never plays women anymore. KINK used to play women. That’s where I first heard Jonatha Brooke, Suzanne Santo of HONEYHONEY, Mindy Smith, Kasey Chambers-a host of Americana and indie artists. That’s where I first heard Lucinda Williams sing “Can’t Let Go.” And now it’s just bunch of angsty white guys.
Oh, they might throw in a little Billie Eilish now and then, but rarely.
I speak to the manager
I called KINK once and asked why they never play women. The program manager, who was DJing that afternoon, told me that their women artists get play on pop stations and then KINK can’t play them anymore. Well then, this happens all the time with male artists. Hozier? Teddy Swims? I can go on but those artists get plenty of Top 40 play and KINK still plays them.
Anyway.
BELA105 had a mix of current and older hits. Great radio music, lots of women’s voices, and maybe the worst sound bites of any station I’ve ever listened to. They ran with “Bella” as the personification of their listener, and she was into the gym, shopping, pumpkin-spice lattes (I do like those) and her job at NIKE. I think it was maybe Sheila Hamilton doing the voice work in this Cali-girl voice she uses. I found the whole Bella persona thing insulting and tone deaf, but I put up with it for the music.
So now I’m hunting around the dial for a third station. I still have KINK and Z100, but Z100 leans too heavily on John Jay and Rich, three people who talk all the time. I’m not much for excessive talking on the radio. I used to listen to Daria, Mitch and Ted, but Mitch migrated to KINK (he is absolutely wonderful as a DJ) and I don’t know where Daria and Ted went, and I don’t really care, because I do still have Mitch.
My point is, I am not that interested in listening to people talk on the radio.
I want music.
When my husband and I commuted together, back before the pandemic shutdown, he would have the radio tuned to the morning show on KINK, which was Mitch and Staci. He would turn down the radio whenever they played a song. When Mitch and Staci would start talking, he’d turn it back up. I was so confused. This is the exact opposite of what I do. I was baffled, but silent, as I do not talk much in the morning. That’s fine because my husband talks enough for the both of us.
But that was years ago. I no longer commute, but in the car, I want music. My husband always listens to sports talk radio. When I’m riding with him, he turns it off. I don’t even have to ask.
All this is dull to you non-Portlanders, I’m sure. But I do have a larger point (aside from the fact that I still listen to the radio in my car, like a dinosaur or something). I also have the jazz station and the classical station to listen to, but that is not car music. That is work-from-home music.
Car music is different. Car music makes you think and remember. Car music makes you want to work on your own fiction, instead of whatever you’ll be writing at the office that day. Most of all, it makes you sing along.
And you never know what you’ll be wanting to sing. It might be Earth, Wind and Fire. It might be Steve Earle. It might be Beyonce. I need ALL KINDS of music at my beck and call, because I am a musical omnivore and I want to devour it all.
My musical history
I come from a family of musical omnivores. I have never understood how you could choose one type of music, elevate it above all others, and declare this the one true music before which all others must submit. No one in my family did that, and we likewise extended that same tolerance to each other’s singular passions; my older brother’s jazz, my mother’s opera, my younger brother’s Johnny Cash. For me and sister, this was even true of our early taste for teen-idol pop, or bubblegum music.
It would be so easy to dismiss the Jackson 5 and “ABC.” Or the Osmonds’ “Puppy Love.” Sappy, poppy songs sung by boys whose voices hadn’t changed. But my sister and I loved these songs, which we tuned in on the tiny tinny transistor radios we found in our Christmas stockings in 1971. These boys sang in a register like our own, which added a special layer of enjoyment.
Jack Wild was not a gifted vocalist, but no one ever laughed at us or asked us to turn down his records. We played it loud and proud. When the Partridge Family came along, we devoured that first album, oblivious to the fact that David Cassidy wasn’t even singing on “I Think I Love You.” These were our songs, this was our music. We played it on the record player in our room, not the big stereo my dad shipped home while he was in Vietnam, but the avocado green record player with the square speakers.
Alongside these records, we played my parents’ albums by The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin. It wasn’t all bubblegum, just partly. But that sweet pop was important to us.
All told, I don’t think our bubblegum phase lasted all that long. When I was thirteen, we fell in love with Cat Stevens, and wore out Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’. The soundtrack to HR Pufnstuf was replaced by the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar. And then my older brother started bringing us home new music; Todd Rundgren, Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt. I bought my own Carly Simon records, even though I had trouble singing along with her. I have a head voice, and hers is all throat.
Today, that makes me…different.
My tastes matured right along with me, or perhaps my tastes enlarged along with the rest of me, but I still love all of it. I have no guilty pleasures. I’ll still belt out “Different.”
Disco? Love it. Retro funk? Blast it. 80s boy bands? Pump up the volume. I want it that way.
My early love of bubble gum has left me with a lifelong taste for Top 40 music, which I listen to in the car. I don’t apologize for it, despite the lip-curling disdain, the open contempt with which most of my peers speak of radio hits. I want to hear Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan just as much as any girl does.
Which brings me to my theory, of course. For the most part:
Who (mostly) listens to bubblegum?
Who (mostly) listens to Top 40?
Who (mostly) listens to KPop?
Why does society routinely take a big, gleeful dump on whatever girls like?
My conclusion
It is culturally demanded that whatever inspires happiness and excitement in girls and young women will be sneered at and dismissed. And women participate in it. We announce our graduation from girl to woman through rejection of whatever previously thrilled us. We are serious now. We can’t like the bubblegum. We have to grow up and set aside our childish things.
Maybe that’s what BELA105 was trying to defend with their snotty sound bites that championed a woman’s right to her pop music, aligning it with shopping, workouts, seasonal Starbucks and the like.
Well, pay attention, women. If you like it, it must be dismissed from the airwaves. In fact, what’s at 105 now? Sports talk radio. My husband’s station. I know he’s not personally responsible for this, but I’ve made it a point to forgive him anyway, because I have a big heart and all that.
A big heart, and no Top 40.
Posted on Dad’s 83rd birthday, an old post about his 65th birthday
ON OLD POST (from a defunct blog) (can I make this any more clear)
I found an old blog post from August, 2007, about a day when the family traveled to the coast to celebrate my dad’s 65th birthday in Astoria. Eighteen years ago! The baby in this post turned 18 this spring. I’m reposting it because I loved this day, and I miss my dad on his 83rd birthday, and I miss a couple of other people who are in this post. But not T. T is right here. T and I are MARRIED now.
Old blog post begins NOW
Yesterday was the day my family converged on Astoria to celebrate my dad’s 65th birthday. The theme was ”You’d better retire,” which of course my dad retired many years ago, so that was, like, a joke. Brother Steve drove down on Friday, and Younger Brother, Sis-In-Law, and their Baby came down yesterday AM. I drove over with T, my sister, and Oldest, because my other two had to work.
This is the first time I’ve seen my dad’s new digs. I love his home, which is very near the Goonies house, if any of you remember the movie or know the Oregon coast. So his view is spectacular, especially from the second floor. The house was built in 1885, and has fabulously slanting wooden floors, crooked eaves and 11-foot ceilings. I admire the amount of entry and walkway space, something that seems sadly lacking in homes built from the fifities on. Dad’s house is not large (though it was, I’m sure, in 1885) and it is all about the transitions, it has an entry and hallways and alcoves, and it has a narrow but looooong front porch that looks over the shipyard and mountains.
Dad cooked a porkroast on the grill and Younger Brother grilled steaks. We brought baked beans and seven-layer bars, and there were store-bought salads and some great bread for sopping up the juice from these mammoth steaks. The steak was so very good that I just wanted a private corner to be alone with it. And there was the ugliest bakery cake I’d ever seen, and presents, and I think Dad really had a great time.
The highlight was of course my lovely little niece. She’s grown up so much since I last saw her (at age two weeks) and she’s lost her funny little monkey face and she’s so very pretty. I kept saying that over and over again as she’d smile and kick and reach and grizz and fuss and flex and roll and do so many miraculous baby things, I’d say, ”She’s so pretty. She’s so darling. She’s so cute.” and wriggle with it. But at some point, Oldest and I realized that we were just praising her looks, so we launched into a murmured description of her other qualities that went something like this:
She also has a beautiful and intact self-esteem.
She’s athletic and capable and interested in team sports.
She’ll have many hobbies and interests, some of them to do with math and science.
She’ll never be paid less than a man for equal work.
She clearly thinks too well of herself to ever settle for less than the best a man can offer.
And so on. Sis-in-law was laughing so hard.
The way the day worked was, the baby would be awake, so we would all look at her, make conversation with her, exclaim over her, listen to her (she makes the most adorable coos and growls), hold her and take photos of her. Then she’d sleep or nurse, so then we’d all talk to each other. Then her little brown eyes would pop back into view and we’d start again with the baby adoration.
We followed the progress of a long-awaited full diaper with much speculation and encouragement. ”Sounds like she’s really going to town, now, listen to that little grunting.” ”Yup, I think she’s getting serious for sure.” ”Definitely going to happen.” ”Oh you bet.”
She had a cool folding crib/playpen/changing table thing that was extremely handy because while she was in it, we could group around her and all have a really good view of her actions. She would lie on her back in it and kick her feet and try to reach for toys that we would hold out, which is really cute right now because her hands come slowly together right at the length of her reach. Her fingers make a small ”O” and if the toy isn’t grasped by this slow and careful motion (like a claw machine), she sometimes gets distracted by her hands. ”Hey, look at these, these are cool, too.” She seems to have inherited the prehensile toes of her aunts. She immediately forgets anything that falls out of her sight, so peek-a-boo is currently out of the question, though I imagine she’ll be absolutely brilliant at it.
At one point, my sister, Sis in law, Oldest and I had been standing there watching her try to reach for the dinosour and the rattle and commenting on the perfection of her chubby little feet and the adorable shapes her mouth makes and my younger brother said, ”You know, I think if I ever wanted to make a woman trap, I’d put a little baby in the middle of it.”
There really were other people in the room, and Sherman the Great Dane, and Dad’s dogs, and the eating and the seeing of the house and all, but yeah. Then there was That Baby. And oh, did we enjoy seeing her.
My sister was sober and calm. She says she’s trying this new thing, a brand new thing in her life, which is, she just doesn’t lie. She’s not promising she won’t lie ever again. My sister learned to lie at a very early age and she’s done it her whole life to feel safe and occasionally powerful, so it’s not like she can surrender it forever. It was her coping and survival mechanism long before she discovered eating disorders, drugs, cutting herself, boys, shoplifting, compulsive shopping, drinking, or Munchausen’s and Munchausen’s by proxy. But the last time she entered rehab, she decided to give not lying a try and it’s been going all right so she’s continuing with it.
It makes her so much less tiring to be around. For reasons I don’t understand, her lying always made me tired, so tired that I’d want to lie down and sleep in the middle of a crowded room. It’s so nice not to have to listen to it. As a result, I really enjoyed her company. I really, really, really enjoyed her company the whole day. She rode behind me on the way up and on the way down, and we talked and talked and talked. It’s the best time I can remember having with my sister in 20 years.
I was tired when we got home, and for reasons to do with a lost house key, my ex-husband was here watching the game and keeping the dogs company when we got home. We talked with him for a bit, and then he left, and T went home, and Oldest and I fell into bed.
I’m in a good mood today.
The Old Blog Post is NOW Over
So that was the old blog post. My sister relapsed after this. It was a bad one. It took a few years for her to be in a place where we could be close again. But she got there. It’s hard that my older brother and sister and my dad are all gone. But it’s beautiful to read a day when they were all with me, and the ocean was shining, and we were celebrating.
My Fatal Flaw
Picture, if you will, me at age nineteen.
I am in the honors program at the University of Montana, which means that instead of having my Western Civ section taught by a graduate student, I am lucky enough to take the section taught by the actual professor, the articulate man who gives the lectures in the large hall. The one with the eyebrows.
We have turned in our first papers on the pantheon of the Classical Greeks. This is before copiers, so I have dutifully typed my paper on a “master” and run off copies on the mimeograph machine with its fragrant purple ink.
I have given a copy to each member of my class as well as the professor. We have all done this, we have all taken time to read each other’s papers and make notes. We are the honors students. We over-achieve.
I’m also overly confident, which I shouldn’t be.
We were supposed to write a paper about whether or not the average Greeks believed in the existence of actual gods up there on Mount Olympus. As a generalizer, one who takes large swathes of information and finds ways to knit together the disparate, I have chosen a stupid thesis.
I should have said, yes they did, or no they just thought these were cool stories. Instead, I cobbled together some overly inclusive idea about making sense of the world, and have ended up with an undefined and indefensible thesis.
This is not why the professor takes me to task, though.
That comes later.
First, he tells the class to look at my paper. Then he announces, “I’d like to point out to you all the most extraordinary part of this paper. In every single instance where there is an ‘ie’ or ‘ei’ combination, this writer has written the word incorrectly.”
I erupt in flames of shame and burn to a crisp on the spot.
I know the rule. I knew it then. It’s never made any sense to me. I look at “ie” and “ei” combinations and am struck stupid. I have attempted to remedy my confusion by repeating “i before e except after c, or when sounding as a as in neighbor and weigh”, but then we have neither, seize, forfeit, height, codeine, protein, caffeine, weird, and heifer.
Is my confusion understandable? I think so. Forty-six years later, I’m still bad at it.
Art Imitates Life. Kind of.
Sources of inspiration
One of the most baffling questions a writer is asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” We are talking about inspiration, of course, which often boils down to imitation.
I was at a writer’s salon a couple of months ago. A very enthusiastic new member listened to me read a work in progress, a really short piece about a woman lying on the cement floor of her basement, hiding from her husband but in actuality hiding from this world we are living in.
We bring shorter, messier pieces to this salon. Nothing is very polished, unless it’s one of those rare poems or stories that flies through fingertips to keyboard and needs no revision. So I read this weird little piece about this young woman deciding whether or not to ever get up off the floor and face the world. When I was done, the enthusiastic new member asked, “Where on earth did you get that idea?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I think I babbled something about how the room/basement in question featured in a novel I’d written before (Gentry spends a lot of time in that room in book two) and for some reason I wanted to write about that room again. Which sounds strange but I think if we tracked back our inspirations we would mostly find strange things, yes?
As an example, I wrote a beautiful poem (that I can’t link to because it’s in a print journal ) inspired by a pdf about the types of grasses most commonly found in South Dakota. I was looking for names for my “real” job, from which I am retired, but as part of it I named products. I always scoured the internet searching for interesting ideas and found this pdf about grasses, and that inspired “Flyover Country.”
So I tried to explain to this man that this strange little room in the basement of a house (where I have never lived) in Oklahoma City (where I have never even visited) just wanted to be written about. Which invests the room with an animate agency that it certainly doesn’t possess, but I associate the weird little room with despair. I was feeling despair over the state of the world (still am btw), and this odd little story is what came out.
I think he thought I was crazy.
Anyway…
Some parts of my life do inspire my fiction, especially where my second divorce is concerned. I process through writing (if you read this blog, you know that) and I poured much of my own pain and grief into The Iris Files. I was completely broken by, not the divorce itself, but the long, desperate, painful years before the divorce, when I was presented with lists of ways I could improve everything about myself in order to avoid breaking up the family.
I think Iris said it best:
In retrospect, I think that the demands for change were simply a kindness on Hart’s part, a last chance, because he thought that after fourteen years, he owed me that. He was extending to me, as a matter of courtesy, the opportunity to become the woman he desired, in an attempt to save himself the trouble of a divorce and the expense of child support.
I was unable to accomplish the transformation.
Like Iris, I failed. I was unable to be anyone besides myself. Part of it was my own angry stubborn nature (go me!) and part of it was how widely the list varied from month-to-month. The list of changes I needed to make was extensive and inconsistent, based on whoever caught my ex-husband’s eye at the time. His eye was seemingly caught easily and often.
One of his suggestions was helicopter skiing (that’s in Iris). I should somehow become the kind of woman who wanted to helicopter ski. Cut my hair short, wear small pearl earrings, and crisp pleated khaki shorts. Get my nose fixed. Get a facelift (I was thirty). Take up tennis. Dye my hair blonde. Wear more jewelry.
Being treated as a remodeling project is demoralizing and dehumanizing. He often demanded that I go back to work full time. At what, I wondered? He suggested driving the city bus, delivering mail, or working for UPS. “You won’t be happy until you see me in a uniform, will you,” I said. “You think you’re too good for those jobs,” he answered in an accusing tone. “I do,” I replied.
This dragged along for years. If I’m honest, it was a constant in the marriage. It just got more constant, more brutal, more cold during those last years. He told me I should want to change to make him happy. “If you loved me, you’d want to change for me.” I said, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask.”
I finally said, “Why don’t you go find someone you like, instead of trying to change me?” Eventually, he did. It was awful. It was also a relief.
Lessons learned
How many novels can one unhappy marriage inspire? Way more than two. It’s tricky talking about your marriages, past and present, in a public forum. It’s much easier to hide it in your fiction. The thing is, healthy relationship patterns make for happy lives and boring novels.
I am reminded of a long-ago member of my long-time book group, who would always complain that whatever characters we were reading made bad choices. She would tut-tut away about it, as if we were in group therapy for the character as opposed to discussing a novel.
Finally, I said, “If every one in a novel made healthy choices, we would have no story, no plot, no conflict. Novels would be didactic, like Victorian children’s books about good manners.” She blinked at me for a moment, considering. I’m not sure she understood, and anyway, she’s long gone.
I have procrastinated enough.
I wrote this blog post because I haven’t posted in a bit. Retirement is very, very busy for me. It’s almost grueling, and I’m not sure how I ever found time to work full-time. But what I’m supposed to be doing right now is writing a cover letter for agent queries for a finished novel that has nothing to do with my divorces or that odd little room in Gentry’s basement.
I haven’t queried an agent in twenty years, but I remember how horrible the process is and I would do anything to avoid it. Still, it must be done.
Wish me luck on this agent thing.
My first husband is dead?
Seriously. I think he’s dead.
I google my exes now and then to see if they’re dead, and none of them ever are. Except I think my first husband is. The internet says he died in November of 2020 at the age of 62. The internet cites his full name (correctly), his date of birth (also correctly), his relatives (all of whom check out as names I remember) and it also says he is dead.
Now, when I bring this up, people wonder if I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m just surprised. He was very outdoorsy and stopped smoking at age 19. I assumed those attributes would work in his favor. After I left him, he went back to college and got a degree in engineering with a minor in geology. The internet provided a list of places he’d lived, and they were such odd places that I googled them. They all have mines, so I guess he became a mining engineer?
I guess that makes sense.
So he lived in terrible towns around the Northwest and was a mining engineer. The weirdest thing was finding him on Ancestry, where I am listed by full name as his only spouse. I thought he was married to someone else, at least for a while. His parents are both on there, photos of his brilliant father and his sweet little round mother (who was actually not sweet to me, right up until she was, and then I left, so…).
I had the strangest dream about him a few years back. His father hadn’t died, and his mother and father were still living in Bozeman. I was expected to visit them with him and pretend that we were still together. This is derived, I’m sure, from the months I spent staying with him because his father was dying, and as he said it, it would kill his mother if I left (I left the week after the funeral and she didn’t die).
But in this dream, because his father was still alive, I’d never been able to leave. We went in their house, which had a strong smell of cold air and dust (yes, I smell things in my dreams). His mother asked me when we were going to start trying for kids. I had no idea how to tell her that the childbearing years were long over for me. I said, oh, soon, and she said, good, I’ve always wanted grandchildren.
In the dream, I left that house and started walking towards Four Corners. I was determined to get away, to get out of there. I woke up terrified that my real life had somehow slipped away from me.
My life is right here, thankfully.
I don’t know who I’d be if I’d never left. Staying was not an option, so I didn’t engage in much what-if once I finally got away. I do know that I’d have earned my degree much sooner than I did. I’d never have had children because I’d never have had kids with him.
We lived in grinding poverty in the shed/hovel/apartment to the right, here: This Place. I was used to poverty, because my parents were liberal U-Haul moving addicts. But he came from an educated, comfortable family. He grew up in comfort.
I think his three brothers are still out there alive. I wonder if any of them had grandkids for my former mother-in-law. She must have been so relieved when I packed up my cats and left, asking for nothing at all, no car, no money, no slice of his trust fund.
All I wanted was out.
Also, odd coincidence.
I am reading two books right now. The Story of Mary MacLane is by Mary MacLane, who became a national sensation when her scandalously outspoken memoir was published in 1902, and The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry. This BRILLIANT little book opens with this quote: “I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.”–Mary MacLane
Both books are set in Butte, Montana. That’s where my first husband lived for a good part of his life post-me, and where he apparently died. I keep saying “apparently.” Forgive that. I’m only old on the outside, the inside of me doesn’t feel old at all, so death of people my age is still shocking to me.
I am retired, tired, and happy.
Just a quick note after I retired and before I retire.
Being retired feels like that first morning of summer vacation when you’re eleven, when you wake up and a vista of liberty stretches golden and glowing before you. Except when you’re retired, it’s forever and you’re old. I am giddy with happiness.
I am retired, and I am also tired after a Mother’s Day with my girls, my son and daughter in law, three grandkids, and my husband. It was an afternoon of laughter, noise, and delectable charcuterie provided by my oldest and her husband.
I requested a craft, so we all painted with watercolors. There are some absolute MASTERPIECES over there on the hutch. My middle daughter cleaned up the entire mess of a table. I have a fridge full of delectable leftovers so I should probably have some people over for drinks.
Now they have all gone home. I finished up the hand-wash dishes.
I am extremely content.
Siblings: Another Order of Magnitude
Truths
Losing your parents is one thing. As I told my friend Kim when her mother died suddenly in her sleep, “as terrible as this is, you will get through it. Because we are designed to outlive our parents.” I had other, more comforting things to say to Kim, I promise. But I believe my blunt assertion is true.
My grief at losing my mother was indescribable. I have since lost my dad and my birth father. Each death brought with it a load of pain, regret, and bafflement. When you lose a parent, you are forced to face the truth that you are flying solo in these matters, and that anything you need to work through where that parent is concerned, you’ll be doing the work on your own. They are not there to answer your questions or meet your emotions with apologies or explanations.
You realize, over time, that they were people too. They were also doing the best they could with the basic wiring and inadequate tools with which they were provided. Just as I am, as a parent. And man oh man, have I ever made mistakes.
Siblings
Siblings, though. Losing a sibling is another order of magnitude. Because you were in it together, a united front, somehow surviving your difficult childhoods together. Even if you were part of what made those childhoods difficult. Even if you drove each other away. Me and mine might have fought in whispers, but we still fought. There were fractures and fights and a general sense of hopelessness at times. We were all so weird.
But if anyone outside the sibling group had a bad thing to say about one of us, we circled the wagons. No one should dare. For everything a sibling ever did wrong, they did something right. We understood each other, our damage and genius and above all, our humor. Because that is how we made it through. By laughing.
Where to go from here?
On Sunday, as we sat in my sister’s apartment waiting for my nephew to arrive, my younger brother and I exchanged a deep look. “We have to do better,” I said. He agreed with a nod, because more words were not needed. We didn’t say, “because we’re what’s left.” We didn’t say, “because life is short.” No one had to say those words. We sensed them in the air and saw them in each other’s eyes. I felt it in the long hug from my sister-in-law, who is not much of a hugger but in that hug I felt all the love flow from her to me. We are what we have left.
My nephew and I keep calling each other to see if the other one is okay. We are both not okay, not at all, but we are actually okay in that we continue to draw breath, shower, run errands, eat food and the like. I think my husband might be getting tired of my big purple robe, but it’s been quite comforting to me, this big ugly purple robe with spots on the front. It’s like climbing inside Barney or Grimace, a big goofy purple monster hug. Yesterday when he came home, I had on two robes, a blue one with the purple one over it. Today I have on another comfort outfit, one in which I might be able to leave the house if needed.
Early mornings are difficult. I wake up and remember that my sister is gone, and then I lie there in the dark and turn things over. Yes, it was swift. But, she was alone. Still, she loved her independence and her home and her privacy. But, she died alone. And then the worse thoughts come. What if it wasn’t fast. What if she was in pain. What if she was afraid. What if she lingered there for a moment when she might have called for help. What if she died unsure that she mattered, that she was loved, that she’d be mourned.
I cry a little, then I either go back to sleep and have stupid dreams or I get up so I don’t disturb my husband. And I put on my big purple monster bathrobe, and come out here and sign into work, and try to distract myself with that.
And then there’s the trip.
My husband and I are leaving on Wednesday for a long, pre-planned, pre-paid vacation. No one has suggested we don’t go. We are going. But before we do, we are meeting with the family here on Sunday to discuss next steps, some kind of memorial. That will happen after we get back.
We also have to discuss the dismantling of an apartment that is so full, so arranged and curated and amazing and overwhelming that it is a small wonder. Every square inch holds a piece of art or a shelf, and every shelf is full, and single item on a shelf is interesting or beautiful or charming. This studio apartment is an expression of my sister, of her fine eye and acquisitive nature and deep-seated drive to glean the world for special things.
I made my daughters laugh the other night with my theory that if we still lived in a hunter/gatherer society, Cat and I would have been the most ferocious gatherers of all, ranging far and wide in our hunt to find sustenance. I mimed our ferocious triumph at unearthing a natural cache. I said we’d be working deep into the twilight, getting every last bit of it. They’d have had to send out people with torches to find us because we’d have been so engrossed in our hunt. But our people would have been provided for. They’d have lived through each and every winter.
This drive lives deep in our blood. But deeper in hers than mine. And somehow we have to help my nephew take this all down and find places for it.
What’s next.
The medical examiner is releasing my sister to the funeral home today. That’s a cold, bare fact. I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe that someone who took up this much space in my life, my heart, my past, my history, my future–that she could be gone.
Another order of magnitude.
My Missing Sister
I woke up this morning from a dream in which I somehow lost my sister in our neighborhood Mexican restaurant. We’d parked, and were getting ready to go in, but a friend from work was walking past and distracted me with a silly conversation. When I looked back, my sister was gone.
In the dream, I went into the restaurant and looked all over for her. The building grew, as buildings do in dreams. There were arcade games, a water slide, crowds of people milling around. I kept walking and walking and looking, unable to find her. Finally I left the restaurant, but looked through the windows of its tiny bar. No one was in there. And then I woke up, and remembered that my sister is gone.
I got up, made lunch for my grandson, helped him put on his rather elaborate basketball shoes because today is basketball club. He said, “I keep forgetting how old was she.”
“Auntie Cat?” I confirmed. “She was sixty-seven.” I finished up packing his lunch. “I know that sounds old. But it isn’t. Not really.”
My daughter came out, ready for work. I told her the Mazatlan dream and teared up. She hugged me, and then they were out the door, talking of school library books, additional Wimpy Kid titles, school pick-up, and so on. I made coffee and came to my “desk” and sat down, took up my phone to send my usual good morning text to my sister, and teared up again.
I wondered who to text instead. I wondered where to send this energy, this basic daily greeting of Good morning, sweet sissy. Because she is not there to get the texts. She will not be here for the two times a day I text her to confirm that she’s taken her meds, or the inevitable daily call to talk about nothing and everything. My sister is gone.
Just since Saturday, there is so much to tell her. I would have, for instance, told her about that dream in which she disappeared. She would have told me that of course she wasn’t in the bar, because she’d be fifteen years sober in October.
Yesterday, I would have told her in detail about phone calls with our relatives: our stepmom Jo, our cousin Amy in Walla Walla, Our cousin Amanda in South Carolina, our uncle David in Minnesota. But of course I made all these calls to tell them that my sister is gone. She is gone, and I can’t tell her about these calls.
I am exquisitely supported. My husband is a rock. My daughters are surrounding me. I have my brother and his wife, what remains of my family, and we are all trying to help my nephew, who is destroyed and still determined to do all the work and do it right.
I have wonderful friends who are sending love and showing up. I am lucky enough to have friends have known me for so many years that they’ve known my sister right alongside me, with all her struggles, and all my struggles with her. People who know the whole story are my balm. Over and over, I hear that my relationship with her is a miracle, and they wonder how it happened. Because it could have gone so differently.
My sister was nearly impossible, and she was also incredible. For the last thirteen years, I have had the sister that I always wanted. We shared the closeness we had as little girls, a bond that frayed in our teens because she had so, so much to hide. We had many years of conflict and estrangement. But we worked on it, and we fixed it.
I tell myself, at least you had that. Think of the regret you’d feel if you hadn’t done that, Karen. But the trouble is, that’s why it hurts so much now. She is so woven into my life that I feel ripped in half.
