What's really hard? (Not softened).

1. Young people, as in, people with outer displays of optimism and enthusiasm about the here and now, or even the future.  Those guys partying on the plane home from Portland. Kids, especially when they complain about wanting anything.

2. Crowded places.  Anywhere that people are having multiple or loud conversations at once. Includes: restaurants, bars, cocktail parties, my former workplace, public transportation, major thruways driven around Chicagoland, grocery stores, events or happenings of any sort.

3.  Places of aspirations.  Hearing about credentials, jobs, careers, school success stories, Ivy League Anything, money made, money spent, money earned, saved, etc…

4. Rock Star Old People.  He/she is how old?  Did how many amazing things in his/her lifetime? Had how many gazillion grand, great grandchildren?  Etc…

5.  Not being the master of my domain.  I'm indulging, for now, In the joy of setting my own time clock.  I quit my job, quit my swim team, quit my cycling group and even the farm share.  Really thinking about what needs to happen and trying to listen to my own biorhythms.

6. Kids, as in, why are kids so incredibly indulged today? What are we thinking? They seem like monsters of our own creation.

7. Finally, for the first time ever, not having the assurance, that if it gets real bad, I can pack up my little suitcase, throw it all in the car, and go home. Big girl time.

8. Watching the world, swirl and turn and propel forward with or without my engagement.

9. Thinking of all the Sundays I forgot to call home.

10. Experiencing moments of flow and happiness, only to be followed by a feeling of sinking angst as I move further away from the drama of loss and to the truly losing ground of forgetting.

What happened to me…(big changes).

I've been thinking about what happens when someone dies, and the world begins to respond to this news.  I've also been thinking about what this particular loss (of two parents) means to me.  And I've been thinking a lot about not thinking (denial).  And then there's the part that I think, and think.

I see myself as a person who enjoys cherishing every experience.  I make sure to live, feel, breathe and reflect.  So, when I consider what it's like to experience other people's outreach to me after the loss of parent number two, it is with the great energy I give to taking that moment to share their feelings, thoughts, self.  Yeah, this is mumbo-jumbo, touchy-feely, but this is the deal: when I let people know that this thing has happened, and especially when I let them know that it's a big stinkin' deal to me, the mirror goes up.  Without fail, not only is the person trying to grasp what this means to me, they're also thinking about what it means to them (I remember my own loss, what happens when I lose my blank) and so forth.  So that's when I breathe, and listen, hug, and calculate how much we can stop in this moment and be.   Everyone plays their part.  This is the beauty of community.  Not one person's response to me has been the same as another.  All of these responses are simply perfect, because it's a member of my community, a living member, flaws and all, showing up when they are ready to show up.

My life, since January has been an absolute delight.  I say this only because I feel so fully alive and engaged and passionate that I'm grateful for my own company.  As low as I've felt, at times, I've never felt like a dull light dimming.  Early on, I felt the awful fear and terror of waking in the middle of the night to the scary memory that yes, it's true, this is over.  Even then, even amidst the hard stuff, I've been galvanized into action and good action.  I returned to a bitter humiliating winter that brought all of Chicagoland to its knees.  I breathed, drank my coffee, my wine, slept at night, and began the cathartic process of purging my entire home of objects that needed to be moved.  I pursued a level of organization and order and logical living but never to the extent of over-obsessiveness.  I knew that I would be useless in the out-there world, so I worked, day-by-day, at rebuilding the sanctuary of my own home, my own family, and a gathering place for my community.  As winter dragged on, my own home took on the look of my favorite place to be.

I've been saying that purging and organizing serve two purposes.  One, I'm expecting myself to be grown up, and in my family, order is a sign of maturity.  Second, I needed to find a way to move forward in all of our lives.  My parents dying, at an appropriately old age, is difficult because it is a sign that myself, my friends, my offspring, my hobbies, everything is getting old.  Every object adorning my house, all of my clothes, jewelry….when is the time right to say goodbye?  Tough times provide an opportunity to ask those questions.  

All I can add, for now, is the part about thinking and thinking and thinking, and still finding myself in solid denial.  Early on, I would lie in bed and remember conversations Mom and I had in the last few weeks.  I cataloged the food I prepared for her, I remembered her playing Charades on that last Friday before hospitalization.  I retraced days, meetings, and more.  I would lie in bed counting the nights that I tended her, and the nights that I double teamed with my siblings.  I recalculated when I made calls to which nurse and what happened next.  I saved four days of Newspapers, because there were only four days of the Register Guard left, in a pile, that she didn't read.   And then, when she did leave us, it was all very real.  We were there with her at home, we went about all of the work and letting go that seemed appropriate right then.  January kept us busy.

But, still, now that all of the time has passed, I still talk about Mom's likes, dislikes, attitudes in the present.  Her sense of humor, her sense of order.  As I moved steadily toward a place where I would accept and truly let go, I began the process of assuming possession of all sorts of things that would keep her near me.  Starting with this hundred-year old ceramic cat.  The same cat that she took from her own Mother's home, many years ago, in a similar rite of passage.

And Where, in God's name, have you been and What in God's name have you been doing?

Thus evoking some of the tone and word choice of my Mother, who somehow, strangely, shockingly, peacefully and completely, died about three months ago.  Somewhere smack in the middle of my absence from blogging (I miss you, I do, I do) the world has changed (doesn't it all the time?), but my little world has turned itself inside out, rolled itself around a few times and then spit me out, right back where I started.  A friend said to me, somewhere along the way, that she imagined I would gather a tremendous amount of learning, creativity, thought power and the world would probably be witness to my discoveries vis-a-vis the blog and other outlets.  Sure, I thought, but I'm wondering, still, what that might look like and when the urge might take hold.

Blogging seems to be a commitment that I seem to fall just shy of these days, so I'm going to chunk it down. Let's start with a commitment and an outline. Maybe it'll look a little like this, over the next period of days/weeks:
1.What was I doing in. say. November. December. (What was it about. Then?)
2. What happened to Mom? (Where'd you go? Why?)
3. What happened to Me? (in other words…Big Changes).
4. What's really hard? (Knot in my stomach)
5. What's really terrific? (where do I feel unencumbered?)
6. What makes me hurt a whole lot? (Why do I never cry anymore?)
7. What is this "Unencumbered" business, and where is this *brand* going…or…do we put it to bed, finally? (new avenues, avenues, avenues!)

-Seven Days of Blog Posts. Seven days of writing. Go figure.

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What was it about. Then?

 What was I doing in November and December? Barely hanging on.  I was exhausted at work, overcoming a bout of shingles, the weather was heading to a very bad place, and it was all I could do to enjoy sleep and some exercise.

I managed to craft a few nice things:

A gift for a Sixtieth Birthday

 And had some R&R in away towns...

Lazy Jane's, Madison

But now that I think about it, I kept on repeating the phrase, "If one more thing happens, I'll implode."  You know the place.  The place where your ears are ringing and you're hardly sleeping but you're not technically ill, insane, or even non-functioning.  So now that we're thinking in this fashion, we were at a steady clip in the fast lane and all we needed was a little water to hydroplane on and it would be over for me. For us (as in, the family), and certainly, for any pretense left of feeling Unencumbered.  Somewhere along the way, my spouse and I looked at each other and realized that it would be great to visit Oregon for a week following the major holiday celebrations.  We booked tickets, didn't give it a second thought, and started looking forward to a week on the Oregon Coast that would most likely deliver the quiet, rejuvenative energy we've come to expect from a visit home.

Night Swim. Nothing better. Outdoors.

"When you get to be my age, baby, you have to pay time respect." -Ava Gardner

I've fallen into the most wonderful well of comfort and fulfillment recently.  We're marking the year anniversary of Dad's death, and there is something magical about the year-long grieving loop.  I feel that we've given the run a complete circle.  We're fast approaching Mom's eighty-fifth birthday, which is happy, spiced with a little bit of sadness.  The number eighty five seems perilously near eighty eight, which is when we lost Dad.

Although I would argue that 2013 has been a nightmarish year at times (global events, national news, and even some local drama to soften (or harden) one's heart) I seem, somehow, to have staked my claim at longevity on this planet.
Somewhere along the way, I put my umbrella in the sand and said: these are the things I like to do, these are the things that I have to do, these are the long-term projects that I'm going to sustain in an effort to stave off the cosmic loneliness of inhabiting a doomed planet (puzzles, yarn-work, Ironman, creativity, food).

I've also, naturally, found tremendous life giving strength, first, in my kids, but also in my wonderful spouse, community, near and far, of friends and family.

So...well of comfort.  I hold, in my very hand, a book that I've been anxious to read.  It's about the secret conversations of Ava Gardner and author Peter Evans.  Ava, ever iconic, beautiful, witty, ribauld, tragic, leads us through a delicious tale of her life, her loves, her Hollywood, and more.  But here I am, on my perfect day on my porch with the light just right and as I read her story my own father jumps into my head. For instance, when I read the following passage:

       

"I might have worn hand-me-down frocks, and had dirty knees, maybe I didn't always scrub them as often as polite little girls should--but we were never dirt poor. I was the goddamnedest tomboy you ever met. In the summertime, I went barefoot, that was what farm kids did. Of course, we were poor. It was the Great Depression, everybody was poor. It cost you just to create. But being hard-up didn't make us dirt poor, fahcrissake." -Ava Gardner

Any conversation about the Depression reminds me of my parents, and my Dad, in particular.  He was born only two years after Ava Gardner, in 1924.  My Mom, four years younger, was of a more middle class family, and was young enough to escape the total experience of the Depression.  Dad's stories were a bit more robust...especially his most heart-wrenching, which involved a fire at their general store when Dad and his family were on a weekend fishing trip.  This story, one of the few terrifying tales told to me during my idyllic childhood, clung to me for years and years.  Finally, I have a print of a photo of the General Store in Wimer, Oregon, which was unearthed by an old friend of Dad's not ten years ago. It hangs in our dining room here in Oak Park.

Imagine the small jolt when I read Ava's words:

"No running water, no electricity, the privy at the bottom of the backyard--yeah. I probably had a suspicion of how horse-and-buggy life was for us...But you don't care about those things when you are a small child and your Daddy's the best lemonade maker in the whole world. And daddy had plans. He always had plans. He built a tobacco barn, and he opened a little country store across the way--Grabtown was just a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, really; God knows where the customers came from, there can't have been too many of them; I hope to God they were loyal--but the buildings caught fire and burned to the ground one night and that was the end of that little enterprise. Rumor had it that my brother Melvin Jonas, everybody called him Jack, started the blaze when he slipped into the barn to roll a ciggy and dropped the match...
I remember that night--I must have been about three...I remember the flames...I remember Daddy crying. You don't forget things like that. ...We were broke, really and truly broke, not just poor, out on the sidewalk broke, honey."

And there it was, that silent inquiry.  A story that mirrors my own Dad's in remarkable fashion, yet I don't remember, ever, in all of the times that we went through different tellings of the story...I don't remember, ever, that simple question of expression of the reaction of my Nana (Dorothy) or her husband, also, Jack Steward.  What did your parents do or say when you all saw the cinders and smoke?  Did they cry?

And that's the rub, right? The rub of loss is that despite my many attempts to cherish time with Dad in the end, honor his memory by thinking of all that we shared,  reflect on the many times together, especially in the last twenty years or so...we can never have those quiet times at the dinner table, over a fresh meal or pie or coffee in the morning.  All the times that Peter and I sat with Dad and asked questions and kept it close as possible, there's no going back.  So many lost stories.  So that's another of my life-long passions.  Tell stories, listen to stories, read stories.  Our history made us.  History is our greatest gift.

Puzzle, Run, Coffee.

early-seventies tape recorder...cleaning the closets.

Bye Bye, 2012.  The blender that is my mind has hardly slowed it's relentless grinding, even now that I've been in a somewhat restful state for at least a week. And when does the insanity stop?  I guess, LF, I owe you a summation of sorts, after all, there was the long build-up to Dad's departing, and the saying goodbye, and the grieving, so what now, end of year reflecting? Amidst the sadness of losing somebody who was dear for eighty eight years, there's so much tragedy that assaults our mind every day that our own authentic pain lies somewhere, lost between the personal and the news transmissions that reach us instantaneously and hit us like tremendous waves.  The urgency of technology and communication is profound and deadening to the senses.  In cleaning out some more objectia from parents' house, brother and I stumbled upon our tape recorder that had survived at least twelve years of enjoyment back in the 1970's and '80s.  I can glance across the room, almost any hour of the day today and see some member of my family glued to a silent device: laptop, ipod, smartphone, iphone. We resist only so much, and then, bam! it's in every seam and crevice of our daily life. 

Can we even remember this?  Imagine.

 One of the things that I love about these rare moments of retreat for family is the opportunity to plod about as if time hasn't raced ahead.  A jigsaw puzzle, a cup of coffee, a cloudy day on the coast.  Are there enough days left for all the puzzling I'd like to do?  If only, but a girl can dream.  I get swept into the puzzling of it, talking through my problems in my own head, while methodically assembling the object. 


Oh, indulgences, pastimes, sitting with oneself, pondering it all.

  And as per the cleaning that comes with loss and years' end.  We also took a stab at Dad's shotglass collection, which may have numbered in the area of three hundred?  I sat with Mom and took them all off the shelves, pushed aside the ones that bore no great significance to us, and then replaced the forty or so that she or I thinks worth keeping, at least for now.  Antiques, colleges, travel memorabilia.  Feeling fresh and lively to look at.  Lighter for the new year, but never finished. Never finished saying goodbye and looking through the memories. It's what we have, after all.

Dad's shot-glass collection, pared down to under 40. 

Hawaii, rooster, Oregon Coast





My new heroes. Hello New Year with the Florence 5K!

And then New Year's Day came.  Sunny, clear, cool, brilliantly clean air.  Friends gathered on Bay Street, much as we had two years ago.  This year I managed to recruit two newbies.  Ashby, for sure, the youngest participant.  She attacked the event with vigor and a great big smile.  Peter thoroughly enjoyed his morning on the river front.  And so it goes, the cycle, warm hearts, exercise, energy and hope for a new year! Ashby said to me, upon finishing, "Mom, can I run with you again, maybe tomorrow?" Dad's not here anymore.  Mom's still here, healthy and dosing us with snappy retorts here and there.  We're here, making the very best of what we can.  Puzzle, Run, Coffee. Puzzle, Run, Coffee. Puzzle, Run, Coffee.

The Unencumbered Cat

Julie reached out to me this morning in what I can only describe as a gentle reminder that this month might be particularly difficult for me.  Huh.  Here I was thinking that this weekend was smooth sailing, all the way!  We stopped, amidst our "tree-like-object"

decorating celebration and I reminded the family that although I seem sort of like myself these days (except the part where I live in my jammies), my parents were always really really into the whole Christmas decoration and ritual thing, so, well, I might be a total wreck come this weekend.  Peter, bless his heart, insisted that we roll the high kitsch cd's that would be our usual December soundtrack.  How awesome is this dude? Really?  He hates this music, and it's all for me.  Something about Ella's version of What are you Doing New Years Eve got to me this afternoon. Everyone had finished their share of their adorning and were out in the world. Me, left with the remaining tidying that would define my role in the family, set the lighting just right and there I go.  Sheesh! Why do I feel This Rotten?  Go figure, but here I am, and Lena Horne's recording of the song is even more haunting than that Ol' Ella cd that I've been listening to, well, forever.

"his"

But even though it was just about the greyest, darkest, non-snowiest December Day, ever, somehow we pulled it together and made it a success.  I've been jawing about a pair of killer Adrian Pearsall chairs that were on sale at the Broadway Antique Mall .  Somehow I finagled a gift out of the whole thing, and boy am I thrilled with the results! Check this out!!!

"hers"

"what's the cat gonna do to these things?"

boo-ya!

"The Unencumbered Cat"  -Peter

Grieving Gets Easier, and Here's How!!!!

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast

1. blogger's block
2. pumpkin pie
3. weight room at the Y w/my man
4. days in jammies
5. great friends and in-laws that adore my children
6. the cardigan that wouldn't quit
7. blues for breakfast piped over the internet all the way from Eugene Oregon (how twisted is that?)
8. falling asleep, just one night, listening to a bit of music on WBEZ, thinking about the constant grief and torn-up loss that is the Torey Malatia killing-off of 8PM-4AM music programming, jazz & blues, every night of the week (was that 2006?)....recent news?
9. considering, to myself, that after all these years, I'm more hurt over WBEZ in a sort of way, than that of losing my Dad just two months ago.  Why?  Because, of course, Dad was ready. So ready. And although everybody with an earbud, an iphone and an itunes account could care less about quality radio programming, the whole affair broke my heart, to it's little core.

Winter 2011

10. sun. day in and day out. Glorious sun.  Drought in sixty percent of the lower forty-eight? Ouch.  But for today, we get out and enjoy this amazing weather. What else can we do?

Fantasia: Midcentury Home Lust

Is this what grieving is about?  I go from one obsession to another, with intermittent periods of complete exhaustion, sometimes sadness and burnout, and lots of crank as in cranki-ness.  Ouch, this is hard. And whoever in the world remains friendly with me, well, I'll be thankful for that...more than the mountains and the trees and the ocean and anything else.  I need friends. This, at least, has been established.

Here's a photo display of the last two weeks' escapade.  For some odd reason, I dragged Peter to an open house about two weeks ago, and promptly, as we walked into the home I teared up and Peter announced that the house had an uncanny resemblance (actually, a reminder) of our midcentury ranch in Vermont.

  So we descended into the land of Fantasia.  

Have Topiary?

The house is stunning and remarkable.  Impeccably maintained since the 1950's by one lovely family, everything from wallpaper to midcentury furniture to clean wood panelling and a massive basement that contains a full wet bar and deco backdrop. 

And if we had a wet bar...what would we do...open a bar?  Yes!!!!

Each of it's five (yes FIVE) bathrooms is tiled in a different retro color (you know the drill, mauve, pink, green, black) tile and many lovely showers with glass doors and festive matching wallpaper and built-ins galore. 

wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper!

We were fortunate, today, to spend some quality time in the place to explore and really feel out the possibilities and drawbacks. 

A visit, tour, fantasia continues...Dig the stainless gutters, wrought iron railings, and poodle sculpture!

 What's not to love?  Well, I guess first and foremost is the fact that we like our life here just enough that any move within the same community seems like a big freakin' deal and not really worth it.  And probably the biggest barrier of all is that every horizontal-emphasis house in our sweet community sort of lacks the indoor outdoor flow that makes a midcentury ranch style house lovely.  Situated sideways on long/narrow Chicago style lots, we lose the all-important patio/backyard indoor meets outdoor feel. 

Eichler: the gold-standard

 And so it goes.  It's just not the right time, but it was nice to dream a bit for a few days.  Here's to hoping that someone can do something wonderful with this house, but I insist that I'm the only person in Oak Park who could completely realize the dream that is this home.  Just about anybody else is gonna rip and tear and you-know-what.  And so goes another lost set of memories.  Do I want to spend the rest of my life keeping the memory of this particular house alive?  Not sure...so...practically speaking...not exactly what we should be doing for the next five, ten, fifteen years. I wandered from room to room, cabinet to cabinet, the reality that this is not the time or place settled in.  So I reverted to my former self...the one that loves estates and experiences and tiny items, things that can stir our memories or dreams from the past.  Although most of the house is entirely cleaned out, except for the beautiful furniture and quite a few pieces of art on the walls, there were a few cabinets that still contained the accoutrements of the owners past lives.  Take, for example...tucked away in a corner basement cabinet, a stack of sixties style knitting magazines, right next to a stack of horse magazines.

It's the FIESTA hand-knit pattern-book!

  I grabbed one, and it was a jarring image, perfect knit table dresses, each named after a place in Latin America.  One page, with lovely script handwriting from the owner of the house, I snatched without hesitation.  And so a piece of my lovely dream-house did come home with me.  And maybe, some day, I'll make a dress...maybe a dress called: Vera Cruz.  Yeah, I like the Vera Cruz, it's a coat with ribbing and a swanky collar.  It'll do, and when I wear it around town, I'll think of the most fabulous, well loved house in the corner of our town, a house that a family loved and loved and cared for and filled with valuable objects and memories.

And if that house, by that time, is gone or dramatically transformed, I'll pinch myself and remind myself that I can't do all the work.  In fact, I can only do a little tiny bit of the work. The work, that is, the work that is required of all of us, all of the time.  So...In the midst of grieving the loss of my Dad, and trying to keep his memory alive, and to honor his own experiences and where he came from and what he shared with me and our community....Is it truly prudent for me to throw myself in an entirely different direction and try to keep the memory alive...the memory of a Nice Educated & Stylish & Careful  Jewish Family in a big swag house in Suburban Chicago Area?  Probably not.  It's not my work.  My love and appreciation are there, but I can't rescue a house that holds a beautiful grand piano and needlepoint pillows and paintings and tile and stainless steel gutters and a great big Saarinen Table in the Kitchen. It ain't me, babe, It ain't me....at least...I don't think so!