Dispatch

This is what we do for each other.  We are bound together, in part, out of survival and we survive because the fit care for the halt and the lame.

These photos are from early  morning at the Amana Lily Pond.

Mom has been, all of a sudden, getting very confused and panicky.  She calls and sometimes I can calm her, but she's  convinced she is supposed to be going somewhere, to "get closer to you," she says, and that she's lost.  The metaphysical implications of these statements are staggering, but who has time?  

Her cats are shitting all over the place.  I had them to the vet and they are fine.  It think it's the cat box -- I tried to convert them to a covered one -- and the bathroom door -- it closes.  I put up a sign by Mom's phone:  a letter in my handwriting (only neater) explaining the situation.  Also, as sign on the bathroom door.

We don't think Mom's sudden decline is probably Alzheimer's.  Alzheimer's is the context, but it does not explain any sudden loss of faculties.  That's probably an infection or med side effect, something to be chased down by my lovely and talented nurse practitioner Julie Shaw (APRN), who is the best neurologist I have ever met, and who gives hugs to my Mom.

I think it started when we all got the flu.  Robyn had one bout of back spasming in the Spring, but went to physical therapy and seemed to get past it.  She was having another bout and just getting over it, but also feeling sad to have a bad back again, when Caitlin got the puking flu.  It was a very energetic flu and the puking took on Olympic proportions.  After 36 hours it was gone, leaving us tired.  Robyn's puking stage neatly coincided with back spasms and nearly landed her in the hospital.  She never recovered.

Robyn herniated the same disc as last time.  It has probably been coming apart since this Spring.  The herniation is worse this time and she is nauseous, weak, has tingling and numbness and lots of referred pain.  She's on so much medication she is totally unreliable and the whole thing is so depressing I have a Prozac air pistol and I just sort of shoot her randomly with a medicated dart whenever she gets morose.

Surgery is today at 2, but will probably be moved up a little.  She'll spend the night in the hospital, thankfully.  The first 24 hours post op are really nasty.  This will keep her there and pain managed by pros and give us all a better night's sleep.

Did I mention Caitlin's urinary tract infection?  No, because I'm so busy that Caitlin took herself to the doctor and got her own goddamn chicken soup!  What a great kid!  She's missed a lot of school lately and is going to need to bear down.  Not her best thing.  Caitlin is really smart, but she was really a lonely person for a while and now she has wonderful friends.  As long as she's happy, it's really hard for me to insist that she be more academic.  She seems to have a great boyfriend and really solid pals.  She works and does well, and has lots of interests and good values.  I think she's going to be just fine, and will bear down and study when she catches fire.  She has so many interests that I just feel sure something will, so I don't worry about it.

Mom hasn't called me in a panic since I put the sign up and we got the cats back.  Robyn will feel better in 48 hours.  Caitlin has really butch antibiotic on board.

I haven't talked about Walker because it would not be thematic.  Or maybe it would be, in that the men in this family are doing very well. 

Walker just finished his last cross country meet running his personal best for the year on a hilly course.  He just loves running and it's infectious.  His main preoccupation is getting to the mall to purchase clothing.  Hey, don't knock it!  It's finite and achievable.

I have been running a little, with Tye.  We eke out two miles on a good day.  Tye has a limp when we run too hard or encounter too much gravel.  Some days I have to walk a little; I cramp or have a cold.  It's great for guilt and low self-esteem though.  Put yourself through about 1/2 hour of panting and huffing and get 6 hours of residual runner's high and the feeling that you've taken care of a little business, hedging against entropy, enabling bowls of ice cream with fruit on top and other decadent things.

I feel great.  I haven't felt this good since long before Dad died.  I realize now that I was carrying around a great sadness that was chewing me up from the inside.  For reasons I cannot understand, I have let go of much of this, and although I am reassuringly inconsistent in my mission, I feel more in balance than I have, probably, ever.

I do understand a few things, learned from my friends and my family.  This things are:

Appreciating beauty as frequently and lingeringly as possible.  Being as creative as time allows.  Caring for others.  Showing up.  Taking the time to do the things we love and to be with those we love.  Thinking carefully about when to be present and when to be absent.  Applying various anaethesias more sparingly in light of said.   Taste.  Smell.  Feel.  Touch.  Consume it all, but not too much.  Love, dammit, and don't quit!

Couldn't post this right after the Marie Memorial.

This beauty flew right past my head as I was mowing the lawn this morning. She was easily 5 inches long and I think this means she is a female.  She looked at me and then turned away, dismissively, to hunt

I think this girl was just about the queen predator in my neighbor's yard.

This morning I took Walker down to the Lily Pond in the Amana Colonies, and I stayed to take some shots of this fine misty morning.  It was good to be alive.

Marie Paulina sneaked off Thursday night while no one was looking.  Kevin says she and Shorty and Diana all passed away while attention was diverted.  Not wanting to make a show, he suggested.  Life had long sense become a burden she endured, I think.  She lived to mourn her oldest daughter and bury her husband.  She was, in her time, sharp as a tack, and generous.  She is also where her daugher Diana got her dogged determination, I think.

I thought about Marie and stood by the Lily Pond and was glad she is free, and glad I am, too.

Now here is why a fella buys a couple of kayaks!  Walker and I took a paddle on the Wapsipnicon River this morning, from Olin to Hale.  This led to a number of puns, but since Robyn helped me drop the car off, Walker was able to call to her "I'll see you in Hale!"

Kind of makes your day.

This is a nice little stretch of river, 6.7 miles long, with a nice current and clearing water.  The sandbars are nicely scoured by last week's high water, and Walker was totally pleased with our adventure.  He doesn't fancy lakes much.  There is no current and it's boring.  You paddle around and there's no suspense.  But a river, now, that's something different!  There's always something new around the bend.

We stopped on this sandbar and I got the camera out, of course.  I had it in the big kayak's dry compartment.  Good thing, too, because I almost ditched the little boat getting into it.  235 pounds in a 12 foot kayak takes some doing.  Once I'm in I'm almost sprightly!  Walker and I dumped the water out of my boat on the first of many sandbars and we carried on.  The sun was shining, the water was burbling, and the birds were singing.

What one sees here are heron tracks.   I should have put my toe in the picture so you could appreciate that they are 5 inches long.  Herons have big dogs.

I was telling Walker that when I was a boy, I used to go down to the Arkansas River and hang out on a sandbar.  The Arkansas (pronounced Ar-KAN-sas in Kansas and normally everywhere else) is a bendy river that meanders across Kansas from sandbar to sandbar.  It provided me with a place to go when I needed to be by myself.  There was a grassy bank up 20 feet from the sand, overhung with young elm trees, and I used to sit there and watch the water go by, and not think any more than I could help.

I have always loved to walk along the water's edge and see what the river left.  I like the texture of it.  The river leaves behind gradated lines of matter of various particular weights.  There's an order to it.  I think this one will make a great desktop wallpaper.

Of course, there were flowers, and I photographed them.   I am nothing if not consistent in this.  Robyn rolls her eyes.  I feast mine.

Time on the river calms my soul.  Walker and I spent time and didn't argue.  We needed some of that time together.  

Fourteen year old boys make better sense if you get them alone and give them a space to romp in.  Romping helps a young man channel his testosterone back into nature, vigor, joy, and motion.

Yep, this is why we buy kayaks.

 And cameras. 

Down by the river I used to find refuge from problems I did not make and could not control, from the decay and disappointment that seemed to follow our family like a stray dog.  

I was able to sit on the bank and wash away 7th grade gym, unrequited love that isn't love yet, but longing.

The water will tell you, if you listen, how you will make it through, another day, another week, the rest of your life.  

You will keep going, and if you look around. . . .

There are flowers.

Dog

Tye's in the living room lying on the sofa thinking I don't know it.  I'll go roust him in a little while.  He's a good dog and his crimes, such as they are, are minor.  Occasionally some good snack will disappear from the counter if left within inches of the edge.  He's a crotch sniffer, no denying that.  Yipes.  And he sits on the overstuffed furniture in the living room, even though he knows he's not supposed to.

He's such a good guy to have around, we don't really complain much about his foibles.  He is an agreeable creature, prone to making the rounds, collecting scratches behind ears and various rubs from each available human.  He will fetch until the earth opens up to swallow him, and can locate amazingly small items thrown into high grass, in the dark.  Tye is a pretty good frisbee catcher unless there's something more interesting, like another dog, or a tennis ball around.

Tye loses his mind over tennis balls.  We tried to catch frisbees at Kevin's one time, but as soon as he saw all the tennis balls lying around it was frisbees be damned.  The slimier the better, there is nothing quite like a well seasoned tennis ball.

Every once in a while, Tye gets a little uppity and has to be told to find a place and lie down.  He expresses his resentment through pointed, long groans.  Tye could do Streetcar Named Desire in dog speak.

Just what we need in our house: more drama.

Iowa from a bus

I did a lot of driving today, back and forth between Vinton and Cedar Rapids, ferrying our new corps members to our site from the airport.  It was funny to see my home through the eyes of a bunch of 18-24 year olds from all over the U.S.

I think this is what they saw.  Corn.  Farms.  I told them the corn was not high enough, that it should be six feet tall by now.  I told them pithy things about local lore.  Corn.  That's what they heard, as though Charlie Brown's teacher (wah, wah, wah, wah!) finally said just one intelligible word:  Corn.  Jesus, look at all that corn!  Shit.

They seem to be a great bunch of young people, full of juice and ready for a new adventure serving their country and facing challenges.  I remember when I felt like that, all full of human potential and bulletproof.  Now it's more about ducking metaphorical bullets and staying flexible.  I don't mess much with my potential.  

When I was eighteen, I secretly thought I would probably end up famous.  Now I think I'm about as famous as I'm going to be.

So I tried to explain that we were driving along the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, once a rutted dirt road, barely graded, that brave adventurers negotiated with spindly wheeled Fords.  At the end of each day's ride, there was a roadhouse, with gas, food, and little cabins out back, some with indoor plumbing.  As we turned at the Youngville Cafe, said roadhouse, and went north on 218, I heard a kid say "Damn.  Look at all that corn."

One of the Team Leaders said "This is where we saw the tornado last week!"

That got their attention.

where am I?

Those of you who are used to checking in here once in a while to see what is leaking out of my head should know that I am sharing a space with some good friends, over at a spot we call "Lessons."  I will blog here, too, but if you're wondering what we've been doing since May 24th, v visit here:

http://nancyturtle2.blogspot.com/

I think I will continue writing my more perverse stuff here, so stay tuned. s.

Serial monogamy

Ah, the old days.  Here are my kids before PUBERTY!  Wow.

Here they are skiing with their uncle, who I think may be the guy on the end of the two rope in the picture, but it's hard to say at this point.

This uncle has recently moved in with his father, my father in-law, after ending a relationship with a woman named Lena.  This is not new.  JD has a Modus Operandi which is predictable due to repetition.  He is a serial monogamist.

JD met Lena in the parking lot of the legal firm next door to the house he was selling.  One minute JD was busily buying a home in Fairfax and the next thing he was dating Lena.  Then, weeks after we moved him into this new house, he was renting his house in Fairfax to someone else and moving in with Lena.  Lena had a farm and JD always wanted to farm.  They set up what we used to call a "truck farming" operation, selling vegetables and knick-knacks at "Lena's Farmstand."  Not "Lena and JD's Farm Stand.   A couple local papers ran features about Lena and "her business partner, JD."

Lena's parents met at Birkenau or some similarly horrible Nazi death camp and still have the tattoos to prove it.  They are also old and half-demented.  Lena's mom, to put it charitably, is somewhat needy.   She complains constantly and can be very demanding.  I suspect, after her life, she deserves to be waited on, but it makes it hard to keep her in nursing homes.  Lena takes good care of her parents, who have to live in separate nursing facilities for some reason that just escapes me.  Lena tried to explain it to me, but it sounded like a matter of principle, and I couldn't figure out how matters of principle match up with issues of dementia.

Lena and her family are Jews, and Democrats.  JD is a Fox listening, Limbaugh chanting, no-listening-to-reason, America-love-it-or-leave-is, Bush-will-go-down-as-the-most-under-rated-president-in-history conservative.  My wife's family is full of great people whom I love, but they all come from small rural communities around here -- Clarence, Shellsburg -- and Jewish culture, let alone Democratic Politics, are simply alien.  Nana had Lena and JD over for supper and served her best PORK ROAST!  Oops.

I grew up in Wichita and some of our family friends are Jews.  The best man at our wedding is a Long Island Jew.  I think you have to capitalize Long Island Jew.  I like, and to a significant extent, "get" Judaism.  The deal with Lena and her clan isn't that they're Jews, although that has created some fascinating dynamics at holidays.  The deal is that to some degree or another, these people are all channeling "Rain Man."

We had a gathering out at the farm and we had a fire out in a grove of walnut trees.  Lena became obsessed about the kids throwing walnuts.  At the trees.  Not at each other.   "Who's throwing walnuts again!"  Her brother Jack, who is reportedly an engineer or something in California, asks Lena's permission for everything and reports "they are throwing nuts again!"  The man is pushing 50!  It was all surreal.  Good thing I hadn't quit drinking yet.  I sat and got quietly smashed by the fire.  Intoxication and inertia were all that saved me from throwing walnuts willy nilly.

We could just never really figure out what made this couple tick.  Then, as quickly as harmony began, dissent began to break out.  JD and Lena came to events but they didn't stay and JD looked uncomfortable, as though his pants were full and he couldn't escape.  Lena was, it turns out, coming along, as a matter of principle.  She also began pulling relatives aside, or calling, and talking about how JD is leaving her because he won't quit drinking and she's worried about it.  She doesn't realize, or maybe it's another social cue she missed, that JD has moved on, as he always does.  We all knew Lena was temporary.  They always are, these women.

Marcia, who was pretty and Southern and drank excessively, to the extent it bothered JD, Tina, who lasted a really long time and went hunting and fishing and was the ultimate gal pal, and now Lena, Jewish Farm Stand Operator in rural Iowa, all kicked to the emotional curb, started furiously, ended predictably.  One wonders if JD is pondering his fate, sitting on his father's deck, his boxed belongings piled in storage.

This is a family ravaged by depression and emotional distance, which culminated in an awful divorce, the recriminations from which have lasted thirty years.  Casualties have included Robyn's brother Greg's estrangement from his father, Robyn's series of difficult and destructive relationships (I do not count myself among them, although she may feel differently sometimes), and, alas, to JD's seemingly mindless repetition of the same pattern: infatuation, haste, distance, detachment.  Over and over, world without end, Amen.

Robyn has talked to JD a little.  JD says Lena is exaggerating the drinking issue.  I would have said the same thing six months ago, about myself.  LeRoy, JD's dad, is not a big drinker and will probably comment if JD gets back to his six beer a night consumption pattern.

Truthfully, I have a good deal of love and respect for JD.  He has been very kind and he is a good man, who loves his nieces and nephews and would do anything for us.  It's sad to see him act out the same play, over and over, with different players.

Today I am grateful for the ability to make new mistakes.  The same ones over and over get old.  Do something NEW and dumb today!

Throwing our sticks up in the air, watching ping pong balls come down. . .

Penguins don't come to crossroads in their lives.  They mill about and their spawning involves a lot of walking.  But sometimes I just pick pictures and these penguins match my mood.  So there.  St. Louis Zoo.  Penguins.

Nancy (the friend, not the unfortunate former wife) is looking for a new job.  I just took one.  Kevin is looking around his house wondering "what next?"  We are all at cusps in our lives.

For me, the real cusp has come as my Mom became less competent.  As her feedback has been more uneven and less approving, I have had to make mental shifts.  I think my detour into drunkenness probably had something to do with my discomfort at losing her approval.  Of course, she approves of me in principle yet, but she resents that we all have a life she still longs for and feels as though I steal from her - sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally.

I'm not minimizing the loss of a very dear friend.  Diana's death is definitely a passage for me.  An opportunity to learn death and life in a different way.  An "opportunity" to grieve anew.  But I didn't use her as an excuse to drink.  Much.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . . .

--William Butler Yeats

I think about this verse a lot.  It's part of Second Coming, an important American Lit kind of poem to know.  There is something reassuring and terrible about entropy.  It's something we can depend upon.  Every penguin takes his last dive into the sea, and few of us penguins recognize that last leap for what it is.

When we get to a cusp, the proper thing for us to do is to throw our little bundle of sticks up in the air and watch as the sticks come down to the ground, in a new pattern.  During these times it is proper to pay close attention to how we, ourselves, feel about the sticks, the new pattern, and other things, too.   We are sending ourselves messages all the time and we must take the time to listen.

Captain Kangaroo used to say the wrong word sometimes and Mr. Moose would yell, and millions of  ping pong balls would fall from above, off camera, creating chaos.  Captain Kangaroo would shake his head in a long-suffering way as the millions of balls bounced around.  Mr. Moose would console him.  I think Rabbit was behind it, somehow.

After time, only a few balls were still moving.  Things calmed down.  Inside my head, I can feel more stillness.  I am seeking less noise in there.  I am seeking more balance.  

I am seeking the next thing.

Waiting for something to happen

It was a wonderful party.  Friends, family, adopted family, students, all gathered to eat food, drink too much and celebrate the remarkable life led by our dear friend Diana.  We didn't have a ceremony planned  but each of us took a shovel full of dirt, laid it at the foot of a hemlock tree planted in her honor, and said a few words about what Diana meant to us.  It was very moving and truthful.  Then we drank shots of tequila.  Too damned many.

I had some really good talks with some really good old friends (you know who you are!) and we connected in a way that I think DP would have been very happy with.  We are connected by our long mutual journey together, which does not end because Diana's did.   I woke up on Sunday with a sore head and the feeling of a life well-missed.

Now I'm sitting, preparing to go to work and continue disentangling myself from 13 years of work at the same place.  I've pretty much announced to everyone and am now in the process of trying to finish everything I started.  Good luck!  My boss is running around trying to find folks to do what I used to do (somewhat gratifying) and generally needing my help keeping the transition orderly.  No problem.  He has helped me a good deal and he has it coming.

What's harder is saying goodbye to clients.  I have been thinking about keeping a small caseload, but then I think about giving up my Saturday mornings to do this and I begin to hedge.  The result is I think I'll take about TWO.  I want some down time soon.

My new boss says we're going to be doing a month of training of squad leaders (I forget what they're called) and then 140 "members" (enrollees, Americorps folks) arrive July 8, the day after I turn 50.  It's going to be a big start up from scratch and I'm going to be training them, I guess.  Jodi, boss in question, is bringing in a counselor from another site to help.  Can't complain about that.

Why the inflatable monkey?   Why the hell not?!  I saw him from the monorail at the Fair last year.  Friends, you just can't have enough inflatable monkey pictures.

Space

It's puzzling.  We have all, I think been through the range of emotions as our friend Diana passed away from her relentless cancer.   When I got home and logged on I learned that she had passed away yesterday morning.

This is not surprising, since the night before I listened to the long spaces between her labored breaths.  The phrase "labored breaths" has been overused, but it certainly applied.  She was working very hard to live.

Now I'm trying to decide how I feel.  How do we interpret this new world without our old friend there to comment, smirk, prod, support?  I think we must each carry a little more of the weight now that Diana is not shouldering her portion here with us.   There will be a memorial and we'll come together again and celebrate her memory.  Our memories of her will come with us on our journeys.

For my part, I have been struggling with hiding from death for a long time.  I hid from my father's death by being far away.  My Mother's deterioration just added insult.  I avoided the funerals and ceremonies of others who died because I couldn't resolve my grief and anger.  Over time, as Dad died and folks supported me, I came to understand this part of life a little better.  I'm proud to say that I didn't shrink from Diana's death the way I once might have done.  She provided me an opportunity for me to heal my own wounds by being present for her physical ones.  It was easy.  I live here and her life was already a regular part of mine.  Nonetheless, I am forever grateful for my opportunity.

Now the world is strange, new and unfamiliar.  It's rhythm is disturbed for a moment and the Universe takes a deep breath, then exhales.  For a moment all is silent.  Stillness, like a measure and a half pause in a great symphony.

Then a bird chirps on a slender branch.  A child rolls over in a morning bed.  Somewhere someone sips a cup of coffee.  Life continues.

Heavy sigh.

This is a sample of my father's impossible handwriting.  This is his legible version.  He wrote longhand on legal pads and as he wrote in a hurry all the lines began to blur and smooth out and become illegible to all but the initiated (me and Mom and probably his parents).

Our dear friend Diana is working harder at passing away, now that we have all said our pieced and spend our time.  It is now her turn to do business with entropy, or Fate, or whoever is in charge.  It makes me think of saying goodbye to my own father, something I'm still doing, really.

When things were bad, he would sometimes rage or argue, but often he would just sigh.  It was a long, drawn out affair, this sigh.  It started with a deep and luxurious intake of breath, followed by a slow, expressive exhalation, drawn out for maximum effect.  I remember those sighs so well that sometimes I find myself channeling them.

When he died, Dad was with Mom and her best friend Frances.  They were talking quietly on the other side of the room and Dad was breathing in a labored way.  Mom told me that at one point, he took a very deep breath and let out a long sigh.  It was his last.

I know exactly what that sounded like.

New guy

"Can you call me, please, Sam?  I can't find my wine.  I think they may have confiscated it." 

Mom's voice on the voicemail, confused, irritated.  It came in while I was doing therapy so I called her after an hour or so.  Mom suspects I do this, but she can't prove it.

"You have wine, Mom.   In Marion Assisted Living places have to keep the wine in the nursing station."

"I don't want to live here.  I want to go back to Wichita.  I want a second opinion!"

She hates this place.  She wants to go back to her house, her woody back yard garden, the goofy neighbors and all the Latino people walking around.  There were little guys on backwards tricycles with coolers between the front wheels ringing bells and selling Mexican ices.  She had a big deep porch and lilacs and peonies that came from Aunt Zella.

I'll go over tomorrow and visit or take her out and she'll be pleasant and tentative, trying to remember what she was mad at me about.  Trying to remember what the next thing was going to be.

I don't want a second opinion, I want a different one.

Once, when I was still miserably married to Nancy I was sitting on the front porch, contemplating divorce, entropy and dandelions.  There were a bunch of 10 year old boys from the neighborhood playing army and one by one they all died horrible dramatic deaths, until finally they were all lying across several late July evening front lawns.  Sweaty little corpses, still warm, holding perfectly still.

After a little while, one boy began to stir.  He had a crew cut and a striped shirt and he raised his head up and looked around him.

"I'm a new guy, now, okay?" he called.  

That's what I need, I thought.  I need to be a new guy now.

Mom's battle has no tag team mate waiting to give her a rest and she's not going gently into that good night.  She wants a goddamn glass of wine without asking for it.  Not much to ask, now that I think of it.

Prom pictures for the Crawley women

Caitlin has always been our plan maker. She once planned a Summer Birthday, because she got sick of January ones. She was 7 years old and happily had a minor celebration of the January date, waiting for the real party in June. The weather that June was very cold and we tried to de-escalate her but she continued planning, inviting all her friends to a "water party," when the temperatures outside were consistently in their 40's. On the June day she'd planned for her birthday a heat wave descended on us and things went off without a hitch. I learned not to underestimate the power of my daughter's determination.

That being said, Caitlin has been thinking about Prom since the first day she ever put on a princess dress. And that was a very long time ago. What follows are the usual pre-prom photos including her boyfriend, Nathan, who seems to be a pretty good egg. She came home sober and happy, and that, my friends, is as good as parenting gets.

Spoils

I found myself yesterday in the awkward position of asking after the car my dear dying friend. I'd been wondering about the car, now that she's clearly not going to drive it. My daughter is going to need a car soon and so I'm just scouting. So, practially speaking, why not just discuss it out in the open. We did, and someone else actually has 'dibs,' and that's cool.





And now I feel bad about even bringing it up.

My home is full of belongings that have come to me, through my mother, from my father's side of the family. There are a few from my mother's side, too, but her family muliplied and prospered, at least biologically. My Dad's side, was a sort of geneological 'funnel' with me at the narrow end. Dad's side of the family is full of single, or at most, double child families, and our particular line is full of only children, so we came to have the vast portion of the family loot.

Now, as my mother's world narrows, diminishing to a single room, I am sorting through more of her remaining belongings, deciding what to keep and what to store or sell. I haven't sold much. It doesn't really seem as though it's mine to sell.


When Mom comes over, she can't remember what she gave me and what I have just kept. I have consulted with her on a lot of it, but she can't remember, and so consulting my mother has become sort of a courtesy to myself.



I was thinking about my mother's panic that I had extorted her money and that she had lost all control. In a sense this is true, in that the result is the same. I now control my mother's life and her money. I choose what things she keeps and what she gives up.








I make her decisions now.

To the survivors go the spoils, what we choose to call the earthly things, the belongings we chose to cart along to the bitter end. Mom's money is spoken for. She'll use it all. I'll interit antiques and art, scads more good books to store in the basement. Eventually Robyn will prevail and I'll have to get rid of some of it.

There are a number of facile conclusions here. It's just stuff. You can't take it with you. To every thing. Ashes to ashes.

It seems there are advantages and disadvantages to watching the dispersal begin while you're still present to attend to it. In Diana's case, it seems to be a process of being open and practical. In my Mom's case, it may be a last way to measure the gradual loss of self.

I am invited by a small sad part of myself to feel guilty. After some consideration, at present, I respectfully decline. Mostly.

Afternoon showers

I got a call from Mom yesterday in the middle of the work day, asking about the bank.   She said she'd called the bank and they said she had no account there.  Since everything she has is at the bank, this caused her considerable anxiety.

She called my Aunt Peg and told her that "Sam has embezzled my money!"  Mom asked Aunt Peg to connect her with a good lawyer.  Aunt Peg insisted that Mom call me, and I explained that her money was still there.  She seemed reassured.  Aunt Peg wasn't.

Not that she thought I was stealing from my mother, mind you.  I'm not.  If I took her money I would just have to support her anyway, unless I also engaged in elder abuse and abandonment.  Seems a little late in the process to start that whole scenario, and besides, if tables were turned Mom would take care of me.

Aunt Peg is still chasing content.  I explained to her again that after this small storm Mom will again be calm, reassured, and will (I hope) forget that she suspected me of venal behavior.  She forgot she was furious about coming back from Aunt Peg's house and going to a new memory care facility.   She forgot to notice that it was a memory care facility.  Mom's like the weather in Kansas.  She's variable.

All of this is about taking the details of life and drawing conclusions based on linear continuity.  Each day we take in information and sequence it, forming hypotheses, executing them, managing our worries, desires, tasks and ideas with the aid of short-term and mid-term memory.  Mom is still a reasonable person, in that presented with facts she can usually make a good choice.  When she has to hold multiple facts and tasks in her mind simultaneously she is getting to the point where some of her conclusions are a little skewed.

When we moved her up here, I got Mom in touch with a colleague who is a fine attorney, so that we could make sure all her legal matters covered in Iowa.  Jean took Mom into her office without me present and talked through what Mom's wishes were.  She presented me with completed documents and did not allow me to be part of the process.  I understood it then, but I really appreciate it now.  Mom got a chance to speak her mind and express her wishes back when her conclusions were pretty solid.

So much of life is about process.  How we put things together, reason things out, related to common issues, pay the bills.  From here out, in my mother's life, content will be secondary to process.  The future and the past give way only to the moment.   Troubles will arise, dissipate and disappear again, like spring storms on the prairie.

This is sad to see in one of the finest organizational minds I have had the privilege to know.  On the other hand, the tree is falling in the forest, and no one remembers the sound.  So no harm is done.

My Inner Diana

A friend of ours is dying and it is almost not imaginable. It looks as though Diana ("well, what did you think I was gonna die of!") Paulina may succumb soon to cancer of the inevitable. It's enough to make a person ache.

It almost didn't seem inevitable. Diana is a tough, passionate, brilliant bundle of Ukrainian orneriness. I really thought for a very long time that she might beat this. She still might have something up her sleeve. I never bet against dp. But it just kept coming, this cancer.

There are people in our lives who have been part of raising us. I would not be in my profession or know how to work a computer or ever have been beaten at Scrabble if it weren't for Kevin and Diana. Okay, I would have been beaten at Scrabble. I have been my best and my worst with them, and they with me (I suppose . . . maybe they were holding back). Who they are is woven into my sense of myself.

I was driving around today, thinking about this and having vaguely agnostic thoughts about all this and it occurred to me that death will not eradicate that part of Diana that is woven into me. As long as I draw breath, whenever I tell an oblique joke, or solve a puzzle, make a pun, or charge off to tilt I windmill, I will summon my Inner Diana. I will fight and argue, push and advocate, I will cook and cheat at poker (just kidding), and try to live my life with the vigor, intelligence and whimsy that has characterized my good friend.

As long as I possibly can,

I will summon my Inner Diana.

s.

I think I bruised a rib.

The title on this photo is "I beat ski-limia." Over New Year's weekend I cross-country skiied some and, well, I . . . um, . . . urp . . . puked.

Twice.

I was practicing my version of the drinking man's diet at the time. My body apparently found strenuous excercise incompatible with this diet.

Well, that was then, baby, and this is now. That's me to the left, skiing Blue Mounds County Park, which is populated with oak trees and from which one can see 80 miles in any direction. Well, not straight down. You can't see 80 miles that way. In this picture, I have already skiied six miles. I may have felt as though I'd been worked over by a street gang the day afterwards, but I did not puke. Didn't even consider puking. They're going to have to find a new nickname for me now.

Here's my friend Doug. He could telemark ski down a vertical wall. Here he is, cutting his own trail. This is something I can't do and remain upright.























Above you will find my friend Carroll, also cutting some new trail. We had about 5 inches of new powder on a sunny afternoon and conditions were just about ideal. This is so much fun that grown men like me will cheerfully ski up long hills, all for the joy of coasting down again.

On the last hill, I was bringing up the rear (my usual spot) and I heard Kris say "Hey Tuna! This is the hill you broke Doug's ski on!" I probably did not need to hear this.


It was a slow downhill curve to the left which straightened out half way down and then dove down, then up, into a hump, and then down again. I started out very slowly and let my snowplowed skis absorb as much momentum as possible. As the curve straightened, I knew it was time to tuck my skis in and shoot the hill. I remember thinking that it would be good to crouch going over the hump. The next thing I remember is going headfirst, ass-over-teakettle, and winding up on my back with my skis and poles up in the air, sliding down the remainder of the hill.


My shoulder was pretty sore the next day and one of my right ribs has been giving me some trouble. I walked around the office like Walter Brennan for a few days after. It's tough being middle aged. Waah.


We celebrated Chris Berg's 50th birthday that day. He's the first of this crowd to turn. I'm next. I'd like to think I could still ski in 10 years. It seems a little more likely now that I can be a little more active.

We're bloomin' now, kids!

Things are harmonious in the orchid neighborhood. The two Phaleanopsis are blooming nicely (see previous buds, last post) and the terrestrial has a new "foot." The Dendrobium appear to have responded to the artificial "winter" we provided for them (cool and dry). They have new feet or stalks or something starting.

I took these shots at night and I'm going to need sunlight to show you the new buds or stalks or corms or whatever they are.

OOOooooooooo!

Oooohhhhhhhh!

Ah.

I've got stuff to say, too. Just not tonight.

Orchid porn with fuzzy interloper

My son continues to worry about my preoccupation with orchid progress. When he temporarily broke my camera (by playing a catchy rhythm on the on/off button while it was hooked up to a computer trying to interface), he told his friend "he like his camera better than me and the only thing he likes better than his camera is taking picture of his orchids, and I just ruined that!" Having solved the camera issue (it just needed to reboot), here are recent bud updates.

Both Phalaenopsis (moth) orchids are budding, the result of pruning the stalks from the last flowers and getting the flowers to try again. The one on the left has one stalk and the one on the right has two. This happens very slowly and the buds and stalks are very waxy.

The bud on the right just opened last night. As you can see, it's working on a second and third bloom. I'm watering and fertilizing attentively, not wanting to oversaturate or starve the fella.

This set of buds is from the showier phalaenopsis. There is a good growth tip on the end of this stalk and I suspect it'll be busy for a while once it goes. The first bud is about to pop and I suspect it may go today.

Growth at the tip of the stalk.

Okay, I know I have created adequate suspense. . . .

Voila! The first orchid of our new season. He just opened last night and will likely expand a little more with the petals pushed back and the center pushed out, in a display that would make Georgia O'Keefe proud! I think she was actually more into hybiscus, but whatever. . . .

And the reason I'm so into orchids, other than that they compliment my obsessive nature?

Winter. This scene unfolds right out our suburban front window. This rabbit has taken up residence under the forsythia bush and helps himself to any birdseed that might fall his way. I think this fella would be an orchid fan given half a chance. He'll be after my garden in no time, but these days he's heavily into birds.