Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts

Reruns: April Posts Worth Revisiting

I'll note that since April is the month people try to complete 30 Days of Biking, I've written a lot of posts in this particular month—in 2014 I committed to a format of 30 rides, 30 words, 30 pictures. I've included examples from 2019 as well as 2014 that wrap up the month and link to all the posts that month; regular blogging to hold myself accountable keeps me on track. Many of them are specific to a time and place so they're not quite as evergreen as the ones I'm sharing here.

Posted
Themes: , , , , No comments :

Making Soup: A Pot Full of Poems

Photo looking down into a large black pot with a red soup that has beans in it. A rubber scraper stands in the soup, resting against the side of the pot.
The more I read poetry, the more I find common elements between poems by very different writers. I find myself reading a poem about something simple, like soup, and thinking, "I've read at least four poems about soup in the last year, maybe more." That's enough to start a collection. 

What's so special about soup? It's magic, for one thing. You know the Stone Soup story, how everyone bringing one ingredient can create deliciousness when they work together. 

My mom used to make something she called "Garbage Soup" in much the same way. When we finished dinner, a leftover tablespoon or two of corn, a boiled potato, a few beans all went into the freezer to wait until the time came to make their contributions to a pot of soup. I do this with scraps that I'll cook into vegetable broth: The tough ends of celery stalks, carrot peels, onion tops, mushroom stems if they're woody enough that I don't want to put them in whatever I'm making all wait in the freezer. It varies seasonally; this time of year the ends of asparagus stalks join the bag. 

When we work with whatever life brings us, no two batches of soup are the same, just as no two poems about soup will leave you with the same flavors.

Soup makes for great literal descriptive poems and for those relying on its metaphors about ingredients and the act of preparation. Celebrating the way the ingredients come together to create flavors is irresistible; I too have been known to compare a completely different activity to the making of soup, like, say, a bike network.

Photo of a stovetop with two large black pots. The one toward the front holds red soup.
I'm not the only one who has this impulse. Thanks to a recommendation in an online community I'm now reading Eat this Poem: A Literary Feast of Recipes Inspired by Poetry, by Nicole Gulotta. It's a delightful collection for people who, like me, love to cook and love to read poetry. She writes with an understanding of both literary analysis and simple, tasty cooking.

This list isn't drawn from that book. It's drawn from my morning routine of reading poetry while I drink coffee—two ways of waking my brain up without asking too much of it first thing. 

Sometimes the poem truly is about soup in all its deliciousness, sometimes the soup is a metaphor. I'm not reproducing entire poems here, simply a few lines to give you a taste. 

"Abeyance" by Rebecca Foust

I made soup tonight, with cabbage, chard
and thyme picked outside our back door.
For this moment the room is warm and light,
and I can presume you safe somewhere.

"Self Help" by Bruce Covey

A chicken soup for the one who is eaten.
A chicken soup for the one who eats
Things other than chicken soup.
Transcending the bowl. 

"A Pot of Red Lentils" by Peter Pereira

simmers on the kitchen stove.
All afternoon dense kernels
surrender to the fertile
juices, their tender bellies
swelling with delight.

"Trying to Name What Doesn't Change" by Naomi Shihab Nye

The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.

"Acceptance Speech" by Lynn Powell

And let me just add that I could not
have made it without the marrow bone, that blood—
brother to the broth, and the tomatoes
who opened up their hearts, and the self-effacing limas,
the blonde sorority of corn, the cayenne
and oregano who dashed in
in the nick of time.

"To Say Nothing but Thank You" by Jeanne Lohman

remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.

"Monday" by Cindy Gregg

I am cutting carrots
for the chicken soup.
Knife against carrot
again and again
sends a plop of pennies
into the pan.

"My Mother Prepares Ofe Egusi" by Emily Igwike

a steaming pot of egusi fills my void
and the space in this quaint kitchen.

"Da Capo" by Jane Hirshfeld

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.

"Monday Night: A Portrait" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Even as she made the cauliflower soup,
she was a deep space explorer.
No one else in the room seemed to notice

she was floating. No one noticed
how gravity had no hold on her.
No, they only saw she was chopping onions,

Updated May 28, 2024 to add this next one

"Potato Soup" by Daniel Nyikos

I set up my computer and webcam in the kitchen
so I can ask my mother’s and aunt’s advice
as I cook soup for the first time alone.
My mother is in Utah. My aunt is in Hungary.

Related reading: Your suggestions invited

Have a favorite soup or cooking-related poem to share in the comments? Soup recipes welcome too!

Poetry round-ups over on my bikey/transportation blog and other soup-related posts:

Posted
Themes: , , , , , 1 comment :

The Rocker

Easy answer: Grandma's rocking chair.

The question: "...as I arranged for a few beloved furniture items to be put into (climate controlled!) storage this week, it made me want to know about pieces of furniture that you’ve loved through the years. They don’t have to be fancy, or “beautiful,” or even, necessarily, useful. They just have to be beloved. Tell us about them, and why you cherished it or it looms large in your memory, with as much detail as you’re able to recall or reproduce."

This prompt in the subscribers-only space of Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study publication led me straight to the rocking chair that sits in our living room, covered with a deep crimson velour blanket to hide the worst of the peeling dark brown paint.

When I was born at St. Joseph Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho, my Grandma Humphrey rocked me in this chair. She worked there many years as a licensed practical nurse and when she retired they gave her the rocker. Then it went to my parents' house, and at some point it became mine because of that story.

Grandma becoming a nurse is a big piece of what makes the rocker special. She married at 18 to a man 20 years her senior (which was so scandalous they each fudged their birth years a bit on the marriage certificate to shrink the gap). She was the youngest of 13 children and knew nothing about how to live in the world; he had to teach her to cook, clean, run the household. She had three children, my mom being the oldest and only girl. 

When Grandpa H. dropped dead of a heart attack in his 70s she was in her mid 50s. Grandma had never driven a car, held a job, or signed a check—he handled all of that for the household. She was all set to move straight into "old age" and rely on my mom for everything. Mom had four kids at the time (I'm one of the last two "late in life" babies she hadn't had yet) and really didn't have time to drive Grandma everywhere or have Grandma relying on her for all emotional support. 

So Mom gave her a fierce pep talk along the lines of "you can be an old woman now, or you can have a life and be an old woman many years from now. Which is it going to be?" 

Grandma went to school, became a licensed practical nurse, learned to drive, made friends, joined two bridge clubs and a bowling group. She became the woman who taught me to knit and tat and bowl, and always had the store-bought waffle cookies in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry that we called "Grandma cookies".

Mom telling me this story was part of her raising me to be a feminist; she told me to be sure I could take care of myself and never to rely on a man for everything.

Fast forward to 2021. I was planning to sand the rocker down, paint it, and put it out on my deck so I posted a pic on Facebook to ask for advice. In the serendipitous world of social media I got all kinds of strongly worded good advice about how bad that would be for the rocker. It turned out a long-ago acquaintance has another friend who is a rocking chair FANATIC (has a collection of he's-not-sure-how-many). He told me it's an army knuckle arm Windsor rocking chair with saddle joints where the legs meet the rockers, and I had to look all that up to have any design context. He also offered to buy it from me. It is not for sale.

I now need to find a professional to do a really good job of the refinishing, hence the blanket hiding its shabbiness. (This is not shabby chic; it's just shabby.) 

It represents both my beloved grandma and how my also beloved stay-at-home mom raised me not to repeat the dependent parts of Grandma's life trajectory but to make my own way. Sitting in a refurbished rocker will represent my gratitude to both of them for the lessons. Rock on, ladies.


Posted
Themes: , , , , No comments :

Showing Up

"What's your story?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, usually when straight people come to an event like this it's because they have a story. A reason to show up."

I pondered this for a moment, then offered up, "Well, I had a family member who died years ago of AIDS. Half the family doesn't know that's what he had because they didn't know he was gay in the first place. So there's that. But honestly, I don't know that his death directly inspired me; we weren't close or anything. It's more that this is the civil rights movement of our time and straight people need to show up because it's the right thing to do."



It was 1996 and the event was a Human Rights Campaign speaking appearance in Spokane by Candace Gingrich, half-sister to then-Speaker of the House Newt. It would take another 10 years before Washington state recognized domestic partnerships, another 6 years after that before Washington voters upheld the equal right to marry with the passage of Referendum 74.

What did I do to further the cause? Not enough. It's never enough. But I didn't stay home and wait for someone else to do the work.

I donated to the Pride Foundation and the campaign for marriage equality. I had our campus join the Inland Northwest Business Alliance, Spokane's LGBTA Chamber, just the way we belonged to the other Chambers; attended lots of meetings; and made some good friends. I ran for office as a vocal and open supporter of equal rights (and lost, but not because of that -- three-way primaries are tough). I walked and biked in Pride parades. I attended meetings and trainings, changed my usage to ask after people's partners (before they could be labeled spouses), updated language on the website I was responsible for so it would be more inclusive, spoke up in work meetings if we were slipping into assumptions I eventually learned to call "privilege", served as on-campus sponsor of events held in our facilities.

I write all this not to take credit, but to remind myself that I was awake. When we tell stories about ourselves we reinforce our essential nature, and mine is that of someone who wants to change things for the better. When things need work someone has to do something. I'm someone.

You're someone.

Being awake didn't start with Candace's visit to Spokane. My grounding started with my childhood feminism (thanks Mom) and belief that the government has no business telling us what to do with our own bodies, which extends to our sexuality. I had been a vocal opponent of the anti-gay Prop. 1 in Idaho in 1994, and its defeat was a bright spot on the night I lost my Senate re-election bid.

Along the way I also participated in trainings around race and privilege. But somehow, safe inside my higher education bubble where we actively recruited a diverse applicant pool and set up inclusive photo shoots to represent a welcoming campus environment, I thought we were on a reasonably steady trajectory of improvement in racial equity.

I thought everyone understood that America was becoming increasingly diverse, making inclusion an imperative.

I thought most good people could agree that any one of us is better off when all of us are better off.

I thought Lincoln had it right when he closed his first inaugural address by referring to his confidence in "the better angels of our nature." 

Having represented the Idaho legislative district that included the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations compound and then seeing them bankrupted and the compound turned into a peace park owned by North Idaho College (where I served on the board), I thought America understood the dangers of white supremacy, fascism, and hatred and we were working to outgrow these. 

 When I cried with my daughters the night of Nov. 4, 2008, telling them they would grow up in a different America than the one I grew up in, those were happy tears.

I worked for a university that conducted research into racial profiling, which we understood to be bad policing, so surely police training would address this and things would change. I worked with faculty in the health sciences who focused on health disparities, so surely public health would address this and things would change.

This confidence in ongoing improvement in our national character is quite probably grounded in my whiteness. I don't have to witness racism so it can be invisible to me, making it shocking when it becomes visible. When my friends tell me stories about things that happen to them I hate the realization that this really happens, every day. I wish it weren't so, for all the good wishing does.

Understand that I grew up with Star Trek. Lieutenant Uhura with the dramatic black eyeliner was a strong and sensitive woman. The Star Trek future had women and people of color as admirals, scientists, doctors, explorers, starship captains, engineers. Men worked as nurses and reported to women superiors. People with conditions we label as disabilities lived full and productive lives with important jobs. This was -- and is -- the future I would raise my children to live in.

In all the Star Trek episodes with parallel universes there are inflection points that put them on a brighter path or a darker. In some moment the actions of one person make the difference. And here's the thing -- they don't know exactly which moment is THE moment. So they have to do all they can, all the time.

As do we. The brighter future requires that we wake up, and stay awake. It requires that we show up, and continue to show up.

 Your Turn

 How and where do you show up?
---------------------------------------------------
Related Reading on my Blogs

Posted
Themes: , , , , , , , , , No comments :

How I Came to Be a Bike Advocate

“How did you come to be a bike advocate?”

To answer that question as one of the opening speakers at the first-ever Future Bike when we held an “Inside the Advocate’s Studio” session, I had to back up to how I came to be an advocate of any kind.

I thank my mother for raising me in a way that shaped me into an advocate.

While she wouldn’t have used the word “feminist” to describe herself, she absolutely raised me to be one.

When she married my father she had already been an independent woman with a job and a car (which was hard to come by during World War II). She used stories about her mother and herself to illustrate why I needed to ensure that I could take care of myself as an adult before getting married. (She definitely assumed I would marry.)

She was pro-choice in an era when abortion was illegal, understood that to be a complex position, and answered honestly with good explanations of the various facets of the issue when as a young teen I asked her position.

She raised me to look at others with empathy. If we saw someone who was morbidly obese*, for example, instead of responding with criticism of their size she would say with compassion, “Just think how hard it must be for her to go to the movies or ride a bus when the seats are so small.” [*edited to add 2023 note: I've now learned much more about discrimination against people in larger bodies and wouldn't use the word "obese".]

Mom had never heard of privilege, but she inherently understood the concept. She told me I was a lucky kid: I had two parents who loved each other, a safe home, plenty of food, a good education, and lots of opportunity. Therefore I needed to use that education and opportunity to help people who weren’t as fortunate as I was.

I know calling it “luck” doesn’t unpack the invisible knapsack or dig into multi-generational and structural advantages and disadvantages. But Mom—born in 1921—prepared me well to understand it, and to want to address it. She explained pieces and parts of the world’s problems as being rooted in other people not having the advantages I’d had.

She had watched her own father, whom she described as a proud man, go door to door during the depths of the Depression asking if he could rake leaves or shovel snow to try to earn a little money so he could give his three children a birthday or Christmas present.  She knew what it meant that she had been able to attend a two-year teachers’ college to earn a degree and what a difference access to an education made.

She knew how far my father had come from his humble beginnings, how hard he had worked to rise through the ranks at the lumber company he worked for, and how much it meant to him that every one of his six children earned a college degree.

Mom told me a story that has always stuck with me, perhaps more than almost anything else she ever said.

One summer she and Dad and the four older kids in the family (I and my younger sister not yet having made our appearance) went to Chicago for several weeks. Determined to make the most of this opportunity in the big city, every day she got on the city bus with the kids, a map, and plans for some cultural or educational destination.

On one of these outings as she stood waiting at a corner for the light to change, a funny feeling crept over her. When she looked around to figure out why, she realized she was only the white adult in sight. The only other white people were her four children.

This woman, born and raised in nearly all lily-white Lewiston, Idaho, could have told me about her anxiety, even fear, at these unfamiliar circumstances. What she told me, though, was this: “I realized this must be what it feels like to be in the minority.”

As an adult I understand that in that moment she still carried with her all the advantages American society gives those who are white. She certainly spent the vast majority of her time in a world that didn’t expose her to that feeling, let alone restrict or block her access to what she wanted in life because of her skin color.

But as a child, I heard her tell me that there was something wrong with our world if being of a particular skin color made you feel funny, feel different, feel left out.

She reinforced this with other stories (quite a storyteller, my mom), like the one about a friend whose bitterest regret later in life was that he refused to attend his daughter’s wedding when she married a man from Hawaii who was of Japanese descent. Mom’s friend did this because of his experiences during World War II, but he came to appreciate his son-in-law and thanked him for being such a good husband. She credited him with overcoming his discrimination.

Or the one about a white family in Lewiston whose son married an African woman he met while serving as a missionary, how wonderful Mom thought it was that the mother-in-law welcomed her new daughter-in-law with open arms, and how there were others in town who would not have done so. Her disapproval of those who would criticize or reject a loving couple was clear.

Raised an Episcopalian and later a Lutheran, she didn’t bat an eye when one of my brothers married a Jewish woman from Brazil; rather, she read up on the significance of the bris ceremony her first grandson would have. She chose a formal departure from the Lutheran church because she couldn’t accept that being a good Muslim or follower of Australian aboriginal beliefs or anything else meant you couldn’t go to whatever reward might await after death, modeling religious openness and justice. I know this because she told us so--her values were there for me to learn from.

When the message from your mom is that you’re lucky, you should use what you have to give back, lots of people are unfairly discriminated against for who and what they are and what they believe, and good people don’t do that, you grow up to be an advocate.

And as soon as you bicycle on almost any street in the U.S., you become a bike advocate because you see how critical is that we change our streets so that everyone whether age 8 or 80 can feel comfortable riding. Mom's dementia meant that she never really knew this became my job, but I know she'd approve.

Related Reading
Posted
Themes: , , , 4 comments :

Goodbye, Mom

So strange, to feel sad and yet to find a bit of gladness at the same time.

Last Saturday I took Eldest Daughter Kate to Lewiston for a visit with Mom. We arrived at the midday meal time. The first thing that struck me as I walked in and looked across the room was how very much she resembled her own mother, my Grandma Humphrey, with her hair now snow white.

Mom slumped, birdlike or perhaps mouselike, at the dining room table, nibbling sporadically at half a roll smeared with jam. A full plate—chicken drumstick, roasted baby red potatoes, steamed orange and yellow carrots—had been pushed aside, as had small plastic glasses of water and pink lemonade.

As always, she brightened when we greeted her but didn’t really know who we were. We settled in, one on either side of her, resting our hands on her shoulders and talking gently. At one point she laughed merrily, sounding so much like her old self that I put my head down and cried.

Kate encouraged her to eat some of her other foods but Mom wasn’t interested. She finished the roll—a 40-minute task after we arrived plus who knows how long before we got there to eat the first half.

For some time Mom’s speech has been a garbled mix of English and Klingon (or perhaps something less guttural than Klingon). She’ll start a sentence with a few words of English and segue without a hiccup into a waterfall of speechlike sounds: all the intonations and accompanying facial expressions of a sentence and none of the meaning.

We’ve learned to respond to her tone of voice and non-verbal language for an interaction that seems to satisfy her. Amazing how far an “Oh, really?” or “I see what you mean” can carry a “conversation.”

She came across loud and clear with “Don’t push me!” as Kate and I tried to maneuver her from dining room chair to walker to upholstered chair in the main seating area. That made us laugh because she communicated quite clearly in that moment.

With the aide’s help we got there at last and nestled in, talking and giving her some loving human touch with pats and hugs. She told us quite a bit, most of it in words we couldn't understand.

But at one point she said "Jan," my older sister's name, very clearly in the middle of a sentence. We loved hearing that because Jan has been the one on the front lines with both Dad and Mom for at least a decade and it felt as if this still registered with Mom. She also said "Bill" a couple of times--my dad's name and we think she meant him, in whatever mash-up she was sharing.

At one point Kate, trying to reach Mom with who we were, leaned in and said, “This is your daughter, Barb—Barbara,” pointing to me, “and I’m her daughter, your granddaughter.”

Mom looked right at me and said quite clearly, “You have the world. Bless you! You’re mine.” I burst into tears. It felt so strange and wonderful to have her say something that made some kind of sense. When she said, “You have the world. Bless you!” I felt as if she were responding to Kate’s identification of herself as my daughter because all Mom’s life being a wife and mother meant more than anything to her. “You’re mine” meant she knew I was her daughter.

I don’t know if any of that is true. Life is what you make of it and that will be my truth for this visit.

We hugged and kissed Mom and told her we love her, then headed back to Spokane.

There I helped Kate move and did a thousand other things for the next 3 days: worked on presentations for the conference I was to attend later in the week, rode my bike officially and unofficially, went to meetings and events, smelled the lilacs in Manito Park, ate ice cream at The Scoop, spent time with friends, and drove back across the state to Grand Mound, near Olympia.

All of this hurly-burly explains why I didn’t look at personal email until late Tuesday night. That’s when I discovered that Sunday night Mom’s hip broke and she fell. She was in the hospital and failing fast.

Operating on a 92-year-old woman with dementia who’s on blood thinners and who doesn’t understand what’s happening didn’t make sense.

We were waiting for the end and she would spend the rest of her life—however long it lasted—in bed on pain medication. I felt angry that we treat our animals better than we treat humans when it comes to the end of life.

Wednesday morning my brother Don called, sobbing, to tell me she had died peacefully in her sleep during the night. I called my younger sister and couldn’t reach her so I had to leave a message. There’s no harder voice mail to leave in the world but who would want to learn this from an email rather than a human voice? I knew we’d start planning the service via email and she would see that; with 6 siblings we carry on a lot of family business that way.

I’m so sad. I’m sad that my parents didn’t have the old age they deserved. I’m sad that Dad lost his loving companion of so many years and had only her shell there with him. I’m sad that when he died just after Thanksgiving in 2012 we couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand, if she did it would cause her pain, and then she would forget but have a lingering sadness, so why do that to her?

I’m sad that a woman who was a storyteller all her life and kept all the family memories in circulation had to lose her memory. I’m sad that the woman who made sure she never missed a birthday card to anyone couldn’t tell you how old she was or how many children she had. I’m sad that she suffered pain and had to go to the hospital.

And yet I’m glad. I’m so glad that Kate and I had that last sweet visit. I’m glad Mom laughed and that my laugh sounds a lot like hers. I’m glad we hugged her and kissed her and told her we love her. I’m glad Mom spoke so clearly and said something I can treasure. I’m glad that at the end she didn’t have to suffer long and she went to sleep.

My older sister Jan wrote a beautiful obituary that tells you more about her life.

Goodbye, Mom.


Posted
Themes: , , , 3 comments :

The Words You Speak

I wasn't going to immortalize this exchange because it's the kind of thing I'd rather forget. It didn't add to the stock of positive energy in the universe, except maybe a very little, at the end. I couldn't tell.
But then these three quotations came my way and I thought I'd tell the story. Maybe one day when you're inclined to snap at a stranger you'll remember this instead of your mom's admonition about sticks and stones.

"The words you speak become the house you live in." --Hafiz, Iranian poet
“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” --Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
"My father would say profane words proceed from a profane heart, kind words from a kind heart, and loving words from a loving heart." --  Ron Sims, former King County Executive and Deputy Secretary of HUD

I was riding home from work on the Burke-Gilman Trail, heading toward north Seattle. The trail is great but lacking in signage in a few places to tell you what street you could get onto if you left the trail at a particular spot. In several places the street that intersects the trail has a name, not a number, so you don't know how far north you've gone unless you've memorized the map or you pull out your smartphone.

Thus it was that I left the trail at a paved intersection with a quiet street, knowing I'd passed the spot where you can leave the trail around 93rd but not sure whether I'd gone as far as the streets that climb, brutally steep, toward 123rd, which I wanted to avoid. The streets I faced had names, not numbers, and wound fairly steeply upward, but didn't seem to be as bad as I remembered being the case at 123rd the one and only time I've encountered that spot.

I was pushing my bike as I climbed to the intersection of what proved to be Exeter St. NE and 113th, where a woman stooped, working in the yard of the house at the southeast corner. She straightened her back to look at me.

"Is there a way to get up and over?" I called, gesturing over the hill behind her.

"What do you think?" she said abruptly, pointing to the Dead End signs.

Taken aback, I responded, "Well, I just thought I'd ask."

"Can you read?" she demanded. (I wonder now how she would have felt if I'd said no at this point. Adult illiteracy is not vanquished.)

"Yes," I replied patiently, already turning to push my bike up the hill to my left, away from those signs and from her. "It's just that sometimes they're a dead end for cars but there's a way through for bikes."

From behind me I heard her say sarcastically, "Only in Seattle."

I pushed my bike a few more yards, then called out, "Have a nice day!"

A bark of laughter came from behind me--whether she was startled into recognizing how her tone had sounded or laughing in disgust I don't know.

I pushed my bike to the top of the rise in front of me. As I prepared to mount and keep climbing I hesitated, thinking about going back to introduce myself by name and explain that I'm still relatively new to that part of town and learning my way around. I thought that perhaps if I put a name on the encounter she might not react that way to the next person with a bike who climbed that hill and asked her for directions.

It's so much easier to be mean to someone in the abstract than when the person is right in front of you holding out a hand, so much easier to see a label rather than a person if you don't know someone's name.

But I really didn't want to face that meanness of tone, the absolute absence of any hint of kindness toward someone asking for a tiny bit of help in the form of information. Although she was a complete stranger the encounter stung; the tone seemed so out of proportion to my simple question and I'd been having a really great day up to that point.

As I rode I imagined reasons for her to sound so crabby. There's no signage at that point on the Burke-Gilman so maybe she fields a lot of questions and she wishes people would figure out their routes before they get on the trail.

This was shortly after we'd had some high wind and maybe she was dealing with downed limbs and clutter and seething about the yard work while I was out enjoying a bike ride (albeit one caused by working on a Sunday).

Hey, maybe she's even recently widowed and it used to be her dead sweetheart who dealt with this sort of chore so she's mourning that loss while she rakes leaves.

I can come up with a thousand of these excuses when someone seems to be acting out of a very negative space because I really don't want to believe people are acting deliberately when they're like this. My husband will tell you I do the same thing when we're driving somewhere and someone passes us driving recklessly. "Maybe he's on the way to the hospital, honey." (I attribute this response pattern to my mother, who often made empathetic remarks about the kind of situation that might prompt someone to behave in a less than optimal way.)

Of course, thanks to the magic of the Web I can look up the address for my encounter and discover that someone just bought the house in July of this year, paying almost three-quarters of a million dollars for it. The house has 5 bedrooms and 3+ bathrooms. With its proximity to the trail its property value is higher than homes farther from the trail and it's already worth more than she paid for it. None of which apparently was making her happy in the moment of our encounter, however....

I told myself to forget about her. Regardless of the reasons behind our respective attitudes, I was clearly having the better day. I don't know her story--it could be far worse than anything I imagined or it could be she's just like that to everyone, all the time, in which case she is very, very lonely.

Either way, I'll take "Have a nice day!" over "Can't you read?" any day of the week and remember that when I speak, I'm creating a little piece of someone else's world, just for a moment.

Posted
Themes: , , , , No comments :

'Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Toves

Can you recite a poem from memory? Which one(s)? Why or how did you end up memorizing it?

A friend asked on Facebook about what poems people might have committed to memory. That has sparked a great list of entries.

For me the answer is "Jabberwocky," by Lewis Carroll. For some reason--lost now in the mists of time--when I was in junior high or high school I thought it would be a great birthday present for Older Brother #3 if I memorized this and delivered it with dramatic flair. Turned out I'd guessed right; he seemed delighted, if somewhat puzzled.

I can still deliver chunks of it, although it's not seamless from beginning to end; I may need to brush up on it now, along with the fencing thrusts that go with "One-two! One-two! And through and through! His vorpal blade went snicker-snack. He left him dead, and with his head, he went galumphing back."

Then there are the arms thrown wide and the loving embrace that goes with, "'O hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Caloo! Callay!' He chortled in his joy."

Thinking about this reminded me of Mom and the many poems she had committed to memory as a child, when teachers required kids to memorize and deliver poems before the entire class.

When she recited poetry she did so with dramatic flair--could be where I got that. Exaggerated expressions, eyebrows raised high, voice intonation dropping to a whisper where the words called for that.

She sometimes did "Little Orphan Annie". All I can remember of that one is the opening line: "Little Orphan Annie's come to our house to stay."

One of my favorites was "Hiding," which I had thought was a Robert Louis Stevenson poem included in the book A Child's Garden of Verses, since I remember reading that so many times as a child. Turns out it's by Dorothy Keeley Aldis. "I'm hiding, I'm hiding, and no one knows where, for all they can see is my toes and my hair. And I just heard my father say to my mother, 'But darling, he must be somewhere or other!'"

Another favorite was indeed by Robert Louis Stevenson--"The Swing": "How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do."

We had a swingset in the back yard next to the grape arbor that Younger Sister and I played on for hours. I don't remember feeling as if I was going up into blue air, exactly, but I do remember the soaring freedom and pumping my legs as hard as I could to try to get the swing up higher and higher until I shrieked half in fear, half in excitement.

My very earliest memory as a child actually involves my mother and poetry, in this case by yours truly. I'm not sure it would be in my memories now if it weren't for the number of times Mom told this story, which makes me think yet again that memories are created primarily through repetition.

The memory consists of fragments: Outside in the back yard. Billowing whiteness around me and the whooshing sound that went with it. Blue sky, sunshine, green grass underneath.

My mother's version: I was 2-1/2 or 3. (She actually wrote this all down on a piece of paper and dated it, so if I can find that I'll have documentary evidence of the exact date.)

She was outside hanging sheets on the clothesline while the breeze whipped them around, and I was playing under the clothesline.

I paused in my play, looked up, and said, "Oh Mother, oh Mother, what a beautiful day!"

Just then the wind died down. I paused, then went on, "The flowers are blooming and the wind's gone away!"

Mind you, the idea that a toddler addressed her mom as "Mother" sounds a trifle over the top to me. That's something that happens in books about well-bred English children, not a kid in the back yard of a house outside of Lewiston, Idaho, surrounded by wheat fields.

On the other hand, I've always loved language and playing with words. If I had recently been told that "Mother" was another label for my mom I could well have been playing with that word, testing it out as something I could call her instead of Mommy. She both read and recited to us a great deal so the possibility of me being able to put together a rhyming phrase doesn't surprise me.

Mom speaks only Jabberwocky now, and constant repetition was one of the early signs of her dementia as it developed. But when I was a child and she recited poems to me I marveled at the power of her memory.

Related Reading

Posted
Themes: , , , , No comments :

Holding Mom

A few weeks ago I got this email from my older sister, who has been on the front lines for my parents ever since they moved to Lewiston over a decade ago to live in housing appropriate to my mom's increasing dementia:

 "Just thought I should share this sobering update. I have noticed lately that Mom seems thinner and she is often sleeping when we stop by. I checked with the nurse and she said that Mom is not eating much. Most of the time they have to feed her to get her to eat anything, although she does have days where she does a little better. The nurse said this is what to expect since she is in the end stage of the disease, and added that she would be surprised if Mom made it to summer. Of course she also expected Dad to go a good year before he did, so it is just a guess on her part. Still, the nurse got my attention. I always kind of thought their deaths would come in close proximity. I am sure that somewhere inside Mom's poor tangled self, she misses her lifelong companion and is ready to go."

 Dad died late last November, having made it past his 95th birthday. We didn't tell Mom. After he spent some time in the hospital for hip surgery and pneumonia, when he came back she regarded him with suspicion and no longer seemed to retain that last bit of connection that had outlived the departure of almost everything else she ever knew, including the names of her children and how to speak English. (I dubbed her speechlike vocalizations "Klingon," a nickname that stuck among all the Star Trek fans I grew up with.) She can't retain or fully comprehend anything we say to her, and if she could, why give her even that passing moment of pain before the new information vaporized?

 After Dad died we moved her into a smaller single room at the care facility and she began to retreat into herself even more. When I got my sister's email I laid plans to get to Lewiston for a visit. 

 Not exactly for Mom, since she doesn't know who I am, although she brightens when she sees me. They're sort of for me--a fulfillment of a sense of duty to the mother who did such a good job for so many years even though that woman packed up her bags and left a bit at a time, years ago. They're definitely for my older sister, who has borne the brunt and who can skip a visit if I make one.

 Over the past few years I've felt lucky that I usually got a good visit. "Good" meant that Mom was awake, seemed happy to see me, and might even occasionally get a phrase or sentence out in the midst of the Klingon. 

 The last time I was down for a visit to see Dad a few days before he died, with my older daughter and her husband accompanying us, at the lunch table Mom brought out quite clearly, "Aren't we having fun!" with a pleased expression. We heartily agreed that yes, yes we were.

 My visit this Monday is one I'll cherish. She looked at me a bit uncertainly when I arrived and said to her, "Hi, Mom, it's your daughter here to visit!"

 She asked quite clearly, "Who am I?"

"You're Gladys Greene, and I'm your daughter," I said, squeezing in alongside her on the big upholstered chair she sat in facing the TV, where a very young Clint Eastwood confronted the judge in Hang 'Em High.

 "Buh--" she began, looking at me and raising her eyebrows questioningly.

 "Yes, I'm Barb," I answered, thinking that she really did seem to be trying to get my name out and had the right linguistic association.

She smiled and began telling me something in Klingon. Thanks to Second Daughter pointing out years ago that one could interact with her quite smoothly by simply ignoring the meaninglessness of the words and responding solely to tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language, I'm pretty fluent in our interactions. I smile, nod, provide verbal filler like, "Oh really!" or "I see" when she pauses, and generally go with the flow. 

As my friend Maggie said years ago about visiting her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's, "You're going to a foreign country and observing the culture. It isn't your job to try to change them--you just use good manners, thank them, and then come back to your country when the visit is over."

 Mom seemed worried about something. She went on at length in Klingon and then asked me something like, "How did you manage all those people?"

I said, "Oh, it went all right. It was fine." She didn't seem convinced. 

"When was this?" she asked.

 "A couple of weeks ago--a while ago," I answered.

 The phrase "a while ago" seemed to get stuck--she couldn't repeat it back and puzzled over it, and was still worried about whatever it was I'd done with all those people.

 I leaned forward, put my arms around her, patted her back, and said, "It's all right. It will all be okay."

 Immediately I felt her relax into my arms as her arms went around me in return. She gave a deep sigh, then another. I rocked her a bit, holding her and patting her back. She pulled back, looked at me, and said, "Thank you very, very much." I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her again.

Victoria, a South African aide I hadn't met before, stopped by our chair and asked if I wanted her to take our picture--I was so glad she did.

We stayed like that for 20 minutes or more, mostly silent. Every once in a while she gave a little start--perhaps that falling sensation that gets you when you're falling asleep was happening--and I'd pat her back again and tell her it was all right. She would relax again. I got tears in my eyes more than once as we sat together, holding each other.

 I realized how little loving touch she receives any more and how important that is. She is assisted, moved, bathed, and more by very nice aides, but they have to handle her in a very clinical fashion. With Dad gone there isn't anyone there every day to give her hand a squeeze or make eye contact and smile with something passing between them.

 When it was time to leave I eased my arms out from around her, told her I needed to go, and kissed her on the forehead, telling her I love her. She yearned toward me--I could see it in her expression--and I stroked the side of her face. She sat with eyes closed, absorbing my touch.

 I didn't want to go. It makes me smile just thinking of how contented we were, holding each other. It was the best visit ever.

 Related Reading

Posted
Themes: , , , 3 comments :

Parenting Up, Parenting Down, Parenting Across

This year has brought many changes and transitions. In chronological order over the course of roughly six months: Second Daughter graduated from high school; I accepted a new job that meant leaving a job I'd held for 14-1/2 years; we moved across the state into a 500-square-foot borrowed condo, away from the town where Eldest Daughter lives with her husband; I took Second Daughter across the country to college less than a month after starting the new job, then turned around and spent a week at national bike conferences, then did another one-day trip for work; as I settled into the new (and very demanding, challenging, fulfilling, rewarding) job I realized I can't keep running the start-up Bike Style business I launched last year and started thinking about how to wind it down or hand it off; we got through a major fundraising event for the Bicycle Alliance and I traveled some more to meet more bike advocates and then visit my younger sister; and as we made plans to head back to Spokane for the Thanksgiving weekend we learned that after a fall, a broken hip, surgery, pneumonia, and a lung infection, my 95-year-old dad appears to be approaching the end of his days.

As I read the emails among  his six children about the issues and decisions I can see our upbringing at work and credit both Dad and Mom with raising us to be both pragmatic and compassionate.

That makes me think about my parenting, the kinds of adults my daughters will be when they face similar decisions in the (hopefully far distant) future, and where I stand right now as the filling in the sandwich.

My younger daughter chose a college 3,000 miles away to pursue her dreams in musical theater. Once she'd chosen that focus I knew she'd have to be far away to get close to the bright lights of Broadway. I'm okay with that--and I'm not just saying that.

The Buddha taught that attachment causes suffering. I don't want the kind of attachment to my children that does that--the kind in which you want them to be, do, or say certain things. (Think of the dad who considers his glory days as the high-school quarterback the high point of his life and pushes his son to play football and you'll get what I'm talking about.)

I know a few very attached moms who are what I call "smothers." (I might add that my daughters also use this term. They don't want one.)

The smothers cling to the sweet, dependent baby-years memories and miss recognizing that their children are growing up into amazing young adults. Those days are fond memories but if we focus too much on those we miss the wonders of the present moment.

If we've done our jobs well, our children are prepared to enter the world without holding our hands any more to cross the street. They start to make adult decisions with adult consequences. If we shelter them from those consequences we leave them unprepared for the day when we're not around to rush to the rescue.

I've been a free-range mom with free-range kids for years, with the goal of equipping my daughters with savvy and skills to negotiate life without my help. I've never been one of those attack helicopter moms who executes a strafing run on anyone who interferes with her precious darling's happiness. The latest term I learned from a magazine article is the "snowplow mom"--she removes all obstacles from Little Darling's path.  So how prepared can Little Darling be for the real world?

Maybe I feel this more acutely right now because I'm facing that day with my own parents. I'm not the first to point out the similarities between the care we provide our children and the care we provide our aging parents. I'm thinking about how their parenting prepared me to raise my daughters, and prepared me to cope with the changes they themselves face now too.

I still have some "parenting down" work. These days it primarily involves an electronic funds transfer with a touch of mothering, along the lines of, "You should get a winter coat. Here's some money because that's more cost-effective than shipping a coat from Seattle to New York." (As my best friend Betsy says, "It's great when your child's problem is one you can solve with a checkbook.")

I do a little "parenting across". That's how I think of what I do now with Eldest Daughter, who has just finished her first year of marriage. Right now she has to deal with her husband's recent surgery; I can't do much from a distance to be helpful but I can let her know I'm there if she needs to talk and tell her how happy the two of them look with each other.

And then there's "parenting up." When I visited my dad the day before Thanksgiving he was frail and weak. I wanted to give him a hug and tell him everything would get better the way I used to for my daughters. But that isn't true. I can give him the hug, but not the false reassurances.

I don't have the daily responsibilities now; my older sister takes care of the ER visits, the paperwork, the decisions. (I had those back when they lived in Spokane but they've been in Lewiston for over a decade now.) The resemblance to parenting is clear, but without the bright future we envision for our children.

Dad is very deaf now so we write him notes, to which he responds with a smile or a word or two. Mom's vascular dementia makes her impossible to communicate with, although she did say clearly, "We're having fun!" in telling us a long story in what I refer to as her Klingon speech.

Thus I can't tell either of them what good parents they were. They didn't smother. They expected us to do our chores, study hard, get a job. They wanted us to fall in love. (Not everything worked out every time on that front, mind you, but the fact that all six of their children persevered and ultimately found a lasting love stands as a testament to the example set by their 68-year marriage.)

I can tell them I love them as they face the final passage. I can't do the hard work for them. But that's not what parents do.

Posted
Themes: , , , 1 comment :

For My Dad, on His 94th Birthday

The day my dad was born—November 3, 1917—was the day the first engagement involving U.S. forces in Europe took place near the Rhine-Marne Canal in France during World War I. This seems appropriate, somehow, for my World War II bomber pilot dad, who was to take part in some incredibly pivotal battles that he never talked about to me and who may well have flown over that same canal, since he flew in the European theater.

I really only learned about the significance of my dad’s war activities when my brother Jim got him to talk to a video camera a few years ago as part of an oral history project. The final edited version places Dad’s actions in context with a historian’s perspective, and left me in awe of his accomplishments and those of his fellow members of the Greatest Generation. My sister Jan put together an amazing scrapbook and did research about his unit, but none of this was anything Dad ever really told us about. “I did my duty,” was all he said when asked.

I had known a bit, sure, thanks to Mom. That it was mostly college kids who made it into Officer Candidate School and that my dad, who had only completed high school, studied on the bus all the way there while the college boys drank and whooped it up, and he passed the entrance exam. That he became a pilot because one day, slogging along in infantry training, he looked up at the planes flying overhead and thought that looked like a much better place to be than down on the ground. That he flew so many missions that Mom knew when he left on the one that, statistically speaking, was “the one he wouldn’t come back from” (but he did). That he lost a tail gunner. That he landed a plane with the engine shot off. (And took a picture of the plane afterwards.)

My favorite story was about the time he smuggled my mom (shhh, don’t tell the Pentagon) aboard one day disguised as a member of the crew when they were testing some kind of secret equipment back in the U.S. (I don’t know what—maybe radar?) and she got to find out what it was like to ride inside a B-24 (or maybe a B-17 “Flying Fortress,” since that’s what he trained in).

Mom wrote an amazing letter describing it, complete with him slapping her hand gently as they walked out to the plane—her trying to walk like a man in the jumpsuit and heavy equipment—and saying, “The pilot and the co-pilot do not hold hands!” (Back then, children, people wrote by hand, with pens, on paper, and if you were my mom you first wrote a draft copy to compose the letter and kept that for your children to marvel over decades later. Good luck with my emails and blog posts.)

One day I asked Dad why he didn’t become an airline pilot when he came home. I thought that sounded like a romantic job, an exciting job, unlike his mysterious work in management at Potlatch Forests Incorporated (“PFI,” for those of us who grew up as Potlatch kids in Lewiston, Idaho). He looked at me and said dryly, “I didn’t want to be a bus driver.”

So he came home a captain and went back to the mill, where he had worked since high school. He worked his way up, he took Dale Carnegie courses, he rose through the ranks, and he ended up managing the Lewiston mill and having some kind of oversight of a bunch of little mills sprinkled around North Idaho. His career with Potlatch is the reason I’ve been to places like Headquarters, Jaype, Pierce, and a bunch of little towns you’ve never heard of, some of which may no longer exist, and walked in the St. Maries Paul Bunyan Days parade as a little kid. I got to ride on the last log drive on the Clearwater River thanks to Dad’s job, on the wanigan (cook boat)—possibly the last major whitewater log drive in the United States, according to one history.

I learned that the smell of sawdust—and the not-so-pleasant smell of the adjacent pulp mill—meant the livelihoods of half the town, or so it seemed.

I learned (although not firsthand—just through listening when the men came back at the end of the day to the hunting camp we went to near Salmon each year) that you only shoot when you know for sure what you’re aiming at, you make sure you shoot to kill, you put a wounded animal out of its misery, and if you shoot it, you pack it out. (And—not that I’ll ever use this knowledge—that when you hang and gut a deer, you want to be careful not to perforate the bowel.)

I learned the rules of gun safety: Treat all guns in the house as if they are loaded (although you never put one away loaded) and never, ever point one at another human being in “fun.”

I would have learned to fish, but he made me clean the first one I ever caught and the squishy guts put an end to my trout-fishing career.

He started jogging sometime shortly after I was born as a “late in life” baby (he turned 45 three days before my birthday), thanks to Dr. Ken Cooper’s book Aerobics. He ran on the track around our barn that had been created for my brothers’ motorcycle riding antics until one night when he stepped on a porcupine in the near-darkness. That day I learned some new words as he pulled the quills out. He switched to running in place indoors, counting his steps silently to himself until near the end when you’d hear him call out the last few numbers as he finished, soaked with sweat.

I remember him startling younger sister Julie and I any number of times by honking the horn if we passed in front of the car while getting ready to load up and go somewhere—particularly if we were all dressed up in our finery for a big night out at the Elks Club, where he was a member and was once named “Elk of the Year” for the state of Idaho thanks to leading the drive to build the new club.

At the Elks Club he’d say, “Mrs. Greene?” and lead my mom to the dance floor, where they waltzed and did the foxtrot to whatever combo was playing covers of Charlie Rich songs and big band-era music.

The “Elk of the Year” plaque hung in the basement near the pool table, where all of his kids learned to play and where we learned what a wily pool shark he was. “Rrrrrrack ‘em up!” he’d call out with delight after once again sinking the eight ball while half our balls sat forlornly on the table.

He taught us to play gin rummy and pinochle, too, and usually won, although I’m pretty sure he was secretly delighted when we mastered enough of the strategy of the game to take a hand or a game.

I learned many folksy sayings from my dad, whose parents hailed from the hills of North Carolina. “Whatever smokes your drawers” was a favorite when he was happy to leave a choice up to us, and I still remember the smile I got one day when he said that in the kitchen and I jumped up to hold myself suspended in a sitting position over the kitchen sink, saying, “Tsssssss.”

And in recent years, I’ve learned that he will answer with infinite patience as my mom asks a dozen times in a row when it will be time for dinner, or where they live now. Her dementia has left him without the full companionship of the woman he has been married to for 67 years or so. Fortunately he can turn down his hearing aid and miss some of her many laps around a short track, as I put it. And fortunately, one of the things that remains steadfast in Mom’s memory is that he’s her husband and she married the right guy, who happens to be a terrific dancer.

Thanks, Dad, and happy birthday.

Related Reading





Posted
Themes: , , , 4 comments :

Everyday Inclusion: Showing up for a Parade Once a Year Isn’t Enough


I’m white. In fact, I’m very white—all the ancestry I’m aware of is from the British Isles and northern Europe (Germany, Holland). My daughters are so white I make jokes about buying clown make-up in order to find a base that’s pale enough to match their lily-white complexions. (They are not amused, particularly Eldest Daughter who harbors a long-time fear of clowns.)

As a result I experience a fair amount of privilege in my life that I may not even notice unless I’m paying attention.

That’s the definition of privilege, more or less: unearned advantages that you don’t request and that arise out of historical and societal forces such that you view your own status as the default setting.

It isn’t just a concept related to skin color; men have male privilege over women and thus may not hear the sexism in a phrase (or recognize it in hiring practices), for example.

It’s not my “fault” that I’m white (blame my parents) and I don’t need to feel guilty for that. But I do need to be aware of the ways in which I benefit and work to balance the system around me so that everyone gets a fair crack at advantages and opportunities that just fall into my lily-white middle-class lap.

I didn’t know this was called privilege as I was growing up but I did learn about the concept thanks to my mom.

Long before it became the subject of diversity training workshops, the notion of privilege was at the heart of what she told me when I was a little girl: “You’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of advantages other people don’t have. You need to use those advantages to help other people, not just yourself.”

She also told me a story about the summer she and Dad took the four older kids to live in Chicago in a corporate exchange of some kind.

Mom determined to take full advantage of the cultural opportunities Chicago offered. Each day she set out, four kids in tow, with a map to explore the city via bus.

One day, she told me, she was standing at a corner waiting for the light to change and realized something felt . . . different. Looking around, she realized she was the only adult white person in sight. The only other white people in sight were her four children.

Let me stop here and say that Mom grew up in Lewiston, Idaho. Just about the only non-whites in sight for the vast majority of her life up to that point would have been members of the Nez Perce tribe, and not too many of those would have crossed her path unless she had a kid in her classroom during her teaching years.

What did she feel in that moment of being the white face in a dark crowd? It makes me so proud to say that she told me, “I realized what it’s like to be in the minority.” She had a moment of realization of what it means to be unconscious of your majority status most of your life, and she shared that realization as a mother.

While I’m sure I don’t recognize and counteract my privilege 100 percent of the time, I work to be mindful and aware so that I don’t take advantage of it directly and so that I use my privilege to speak out for people who don’t have the same access I do.

This has nothing to do with showing up for a Martin Luther King, Jr. parade or making speeches about human rights. It has everything to do with trying to make our world a more just society for everyone, every day.

Your Turn

Have you ever had an “aha” moment in which you recognized your privilege? What reaction do you get from others in that particular class of privilege if you raise the question?

Related Reading
Note about the Amazon Affiliates book purchase link: As always you should buy local and support your local independent bookstore if you are lucky enough to have one like the wonderful Auntie's in Spokane.
Posted
Themes: , , No comments :

The SISO Method for Life Management

As part of my ongoing plan to NOT turn into my mother when I get old—well, this is really only about certain aspects of turning into her since her voice already comes out of my mouth and I’ve been known to say “six of one, half a dozen of the other”—I try to apply the SISO method to purchases.

Stuff In, Stuff Out, that is.

This picture illustrates a bit of that. We’ve “invested” (ha!) in cheap dishware for far too long. It chips, it cracks, it breaks outright, and the dinner plates for the most recent set don’t even fit in the dishwasher, necessitating a lot of hand washing. I also bought a set of deliberately-even-cheaper plastic dishes for use on the patio--as if anyone would ever remember to use those instead of the breakable set.

I’ve always liked Fiestaware and decided to start buying it as an investment in better quality and products made in the US. Not shopping for it like one of those people who tramples others in search of the matching serving bowl, mind you—just having fun poking around antique stores and picking up a plate or a bowl here and there.

I figured this would take a while but we could put up with the cheap stuff (it disappears a little bit at a time anyway) as we built up a cupboard full of colorful fun.

Last weekend I lucked into a batch that nearly makes up six full settings (thanks, Vintage Rabbit, for being such an awesome source!). Eldest Daughter helped me haul our stash out to the car.

When we got it home I faced the test: Would I keep all those other dishes or make a clean sweep of it?

Before the SISO days, I would have justified keeping an entire second set of dishes I didn’t even like stored in the basement “in case we entertain.”

Never mind that the last time I did a sit-down dinner for over a dozen people who would care about matching dishes I had a different husband and still ate meat (that was some prime rib I cooked, too—I still refer to that particular meal as The Day I Did The Full Martha). But no more.

Instead I boxed them all up for Goodwill. I did stash the really giganto plates and the “gold” (plastic) chargers in the basement because I didn't score any giganto Fiestaware yet; if I haven’t used them in six months out they go.

How is any of this being “not my mom”? It all goes back to the weekends I spent sorting through their house preparing for the estate sale before we moved them to assisted living for Mom’s dementia.

I swore then to end my “just in case we’ll need it someday” approach to deciding what stays and what goes. A lifetime of that and they’ll be digging your corpse out from under a mound of empty yogurt containers and peanut butter jars, to say nothing of magazines saved because there was that one recipe you really meant to try one of these days when you had fresh cilantro on hand, or was it fennel bulb?

At any rate, I’m trying to use the SISO method not just on housewares but on my closet, my bathroom, and other places where things tend to accumulate and then multiply in the dark.

If my white sleeveless shell—one of those closet basics they tell you to invest in and They Are Right On This One—is getting ratty around the arms and I buy a replacement then I have to get rid of the first one. No keeping it for back-up. It’s ratty, remember? You replaced it, right?

If I own two pairs of tan capris—one pair dressier than the other so yes there’s a reason I have two pair (pairs?)—then I resist the urge to buy a pair of tan capris with faint cream stripes (different, right? Not duplicative of the other two pair, right?) on sale for 50% off at Bobby’s Boutique which carries the best of the Goodwill best meaning I could have had those babies for $4 instead of $8 and even Eldest Daughter the Uber-Mom-That-Makes-You-Look-Old-Clothing-Critic thought they looked good on me breathe baby breathe it’s okay you don’t need them….

Stuff In. Stuff Out.
Posted
Themes: , , , 5 comments :
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )
UA-58053553-1