Collection

Synesthesia, misphonia, repetitive motion, ASMR - all threads in the skein of my family, and each one fascinating. For the record, 7 and L (lower case as well) are yellow and sometimes paler. Never bright. 4 is more a buff. And at least one person in my family has misphonia badly and copes with it, and another one has it intermittently and just doesn't. (None of us into ASMR that I know of: we are a deaf lot!)

Adventures in Teh Intarwebs, People Have Time On Their Hands edition: someone took the trouble for this. *SMH* Honestly, it's just bewildering.

Happy birthday to Nature, turning 150 this week! A few great links from the past couple of daily emails from them - one, on an astonishingly promising therapy for cystic fibrosis, a disease very closely related to the pulmonary fibrosis which had a hand in the deaths of four people I have loved very much. Another, pointing to the immune damage measles can cause, exposing victims to risk from diseases to which they were formerly immune. Thanks again, anti-vaxxers.

When I was a kid, it may have been anywhere from when I was eight to twelve or so, my aunts and maybe even my grandma were visiting. Mom had a bushel, perhaps even more, of tomatoes to can, and she was manning the pot on the stove. My memory is that I was at the back side of the table next to my aunt V, and mom gave me the bright chrome knife. A small knife, it's a heavy one, gleaming, and that day it was freshly sharp, and my job was to slit and skin the cooked tomato bodies, crushing them with my hand and pulling off the skin, and take out any part of the flesh not good for preserving. The tomatoes were terribly hot, and the acid would burn if you had a cut on your finger. But my only memory is the cacophany, the steam, the sitting around a brown formica table with my family, mom running the show.

Why tell the story above? Because this makes so much sense to me. (Though, to be fair: I have a *peninsula* in my kitchen, and it is spiff.) 

As we come to the season of holidays, treats, great meals and small ... what are your kitchen table memories?



Edited to fret: I fear there is a new addiction in the offing. Science Daily has an article about dingoes, AND an article about Ötzi. Hooray for twin obsessions!

Morning walk

The alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. instead of 5:40, and I rolled over out of habit, then found I actually felt like getting up. Pum came to the bedside in the dark, her ritual morning greeting, and I felt the strong, tight curl of her tail on my wrist as she padded away again, back to her bed.

Dressed and hair wrestled down, the kit and pup kibbled, I pulled on a sweater coat and light gloves, and we were off.

Penelope is a good girl on walks, and today was so quiet I had time to notice the tall oak to the southeast was not lit from below, as it usually is on autumn and winter mornings. Against the fathomless teal just outside the bare halo of sunrise, its bent branch and filigree were achingly lovely. I had time to muse - is that quiet sound, of minimal sand on damp asphalt under my soft shoe, is that a crunch, or something gentler? I had the time to muse, but did not find the word.

Just last night, talking with mom about her puppy and my now older baby girl, I'd said how funny it is: dogs' communication is most chancy not in the dark, but at twilight and dawn - when light is there, but they can't quite see the cues dogs signal each other with. This morning, we passed a shepherd going our way briefly, but across the street, and though she clearly saw the other dog, Penelope had no response at all. No pulling, "Mom, I want to go see the other dog - and thereby make friends with its person."

Dark, still, when we got home, Pum had her sniffs and her business done, and I had all my shoulder and back muscles intact. Seven years old now, she's powerful and big enough, this still is important.


***


One week from today, it will be the first anniversary of my best friend's - my sister's - death. Someone who loved her hard has gone to a place the rest of us who love her can't join him, and it is heartbreaking. Two of us - two of the three who made up our little Musketeers - cling to each other, and count ourselves blessed we ever had her. We are angry still, and yet able to laugh at the ways she haunts us.

Mostly by sending Def Leppard songs at incongruous - or entirely TOO congruous - moments. She remains an inveterate smartass. And she remains with us.

I will mark her passing in a couple of ways, across the miles with our third sister, and alone - and in figuring out exactly how to dress for Hallowe'en. She always LOVED Hallowe'en, and if dressing up is memorial to her now, it is a joyous celebration.


***


The dark season has begun, and that means not just winter's advent. It means not just cooling and sweatering and cozying and contemplating. It means BOO, it's Hallowe'n. It means grappling and reckoning with her loss. Trips to the cemetery, and always, always down memory lane.

I have eaten the plums

The sun is back out. America's midterm elections are over. My friend V ... well. Losing her is awful, it's cruel. But she is not hurting now. Doctors can't use her body to experiment now. And those who love her - I am humbled they embrace me. Her husband, her family, her beloved friends: beautiful, beautiful, wonderful people.

This time has been hard. Like so many families, the remains of our nuclear unit - just me, mom, and my brother now - endure terrible political strain in these times. But, just for this morning, it's virtual hugs and three courses of "I love you." Because these strains have everyday, real consequences - this has, in some ways, been even harder than watching my lifelong friend die. Or, perhaps, it only got in the way of comprehending and mourning. I only know this has been the hardest thing to bear, over this past week.

We are all enduring a confluence. My brother is traveling to the memorial of a friend of his, and beautiful V's will be remembered on Saturday. As her kids do this, my mom is now watching her own oldest friend in town "giving back", as some say in the South. It may be we all suffer the loss of our dear Deebo, my stepfather - and each of our dear friends.

The light of inspiration peeked out not too long ago - unsurprisingly, after The Conference, but also very much under the influence of other friendships. Leila, especially, uniquely lights my creative way. She and I have so much in common, but we write such different works, and about the time I did a recent beta-read for her, I also happened to find the ENDING for a short work we began an embarrassing number of years ago in our writing group. It's been drafted two different ways, I let it settle in a certain direction, and for now it is sitting quietly, resting, rising, awaiting both her feedback and my final attentions.

Writing. Feels. So. Good.

There truly is nothing else like writing.

And so, with voting done and the sun out and my family whole ... I open up the WIP, the big dog, the "real" work. The novel. Just open it. I shall scroll about in it, find something to alight upon, and read a little bit.

Research feels like a good way to go. I fear it may have to be, at long last, the pogrom. (Yes, now, of all moments.)

Sometimes, the way writing feels "good" is different from other times. It's not always pleasure.

Sometimes, it's memorial.

Getting the hang of Thursdays

Publishing late because ... that's how writing (even a blog) goes at times like this ...


Before me lies a sea of irritations. The thing I see is that they all ebb and flow in three currents, and all of these currents sway and merge, and the three are related.

On Tuesday morning, one of my oldest friends died. She has been there for me in situations where no other fried, not even Mr. X, could stand behind me. She has been quietly present, she has been raucously beside me, she has been kind and crazy and tolerant and irrepressible. She died with a hundred health issues, a good husband, a heart of gold, still fizzing electrically even after, really, our girl was gone from us.

Yesterday, I donned mourning - for a girl who loved Hallowe'en, I put on my looks-like-a-comic-character-makeup, and changed the dress to black. It was a hard day, but leavened by good people all around me (it will never stop being a blessing, how overwhelmingly human my colleagues and employer are), a good meal with my mom, and trick-or-treaters.

Today was harder.

Reaching the point, by 2:30, where I could not comprehend that the day was moving so slowly, I could barely pick up another envelope to open it. It took me all day long to open the incoming pile. Something far beyond "fatigue" pressed down on me, and I succumbed, I let it press. Exhausting and torturous. And it's strange, because last night and the night before, I have slept. Going to bed pretty early, indeed, and not getting up at the crack of 5:40.

I was putting off calling one of my guys. I knew he wanted to put me on a new project, and at the same time I was fighting off some niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center, and - did I mention about that succumbing thing?

My boss needed me to set up a call, so I toddled to his office, and the few steps that took, the conversation with a human, woke me up a little bit. So I called the guy back, and ... it turns out that he's fighting some niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center.

And a month ago, I was fighting a very related form of? Niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center.



Is it weird, that talking with my frustrated guy out in Texas, telling him that this is an "opportunity" for Operations wasn't even me taking a bullet or making a joke?

There is a sea of irritations, and there are three currents, and the currents are swirling in niggling persnicketude. And I can, perhaps - at least learn enough about the niggles to begin to deal with them.



I was in the hospital with V and her husband W two and a half weeks ago, when it looked like she might be dying. That afternoon, they "saved her life." She was transferred to a new hospital after that, maybe-diagnosed and then not diagnosed with yet another shockingly rare and dangerously mortal disease. They found a surgical complication we knew was a problem was worse than previously known. More surgery. More life support.

Really, though, no more *life*.

On Tuesday barely after four a.m., W called me and I caromed around my bedroom putting some clothes on my body and thinking what I would need at the hospital. I got there at five. And we sat. Watched the sun rise. Family and friends came.

It was the first I have been with V in too long. All these hospital visits; I have been a poor friend over the past year. And it is too late. Except to be there for her family, for W.

She died with music playing.



I still can't believe she is gone.

I still can't believe she is gone ...

Framing

Yesterday, my mom and I got together for lunch, sat and waited a little while I got my car cleaned up a bit, and shopped. The first retail excursion was to the crafts store, where she had recently left a couple things to be framed.

One of these is the circa-1960 map of her home county. It includes a legend of several local businesses, and in the top right corner are two images of bank branches; one, the new and super modern DRIVE THROUGH branch. The other, the older building: where mom worked when she was a single lady. She pointed to the second floor corner window.

"That is the window where I looked out and saw your dad when he came for our first date."

They were set up on a blind date, so this was where she saw dad for the very first time.



The other thing she had framed was dad's system. He designed a certain system for CEBAF, now known as Jefferson Laboratory, the national accelerator facility. After sketching it out, he had a student put it in a proper rendering, and this, now, is in a really nice frame.

Dad worked with Jeffy Lab when they first started calling it that, and you can see by the nickname how Virginians are about change. Heh. Plus, it's fun to say - Jeffy Lab.



The framing guy did a splendid job with both pieces. The map was pretty fragile, even had small holes in it, but ironed out and mounted with UV glass, it is a gorgeous faded color, but the blue ink is really pretty. The frame is wood, with a nice interesting grain. It's warm.

The schematic is less amber, though the paper was decades old - and you can discern, if you care to, where it was folded. There is one whiter spot, where it was stored for years next to some smaller piece of paper that left a paler, un-faded square where it had lain. It is in a black frame, white-matted, but with the thinnest under-mat of black, to create a little outline around the document.

For someone into industrial design, this would be a pretty cool design piece. For me, it is an image literally mined out of the mind of my dad; who, not that I've ever mentioned this before on my blog (hah), happened to be a stupefyingly brilliant teacher and scientist.

The system's exactingly thin lines and detailed intricacy are beautiful; not entirely unlike a flow chart, balanced, and filled with information I don't understand. It all comes to a result that ... is an ongoing piece of the scientific community of the world.

My dad did that. He is *still* a part of the mechanism of study and discovery. Gone fifteen years and more, he still lives - in this little avatar of his work, which is an artifact we can enjoy - and in his WORK, which is still a part of the engine of science and study.


It's easy to remember, as his kid, that my brother and I, his grandkids - and mom, who lived with him for over forty years, and started this branch of family - are the products of his life. But it's heart-swelling to think: dad contributed to so much more than just "me" in this world (as good fathers do, right?). That his being a teacher frustrated and challenged and maybe inspired hundreds of others. Maybe thousands.

My dad touched so many things, as curious intellects do. He *made* much more than I probably ever will. Which so few of us will ever be able to say.



And it's out that second-floor window ... where that all began, just before the blind date did.

Saturation

One of the things about going through a dry spell as an author of historical fiction is that getting back to writing involves more than simply ass-in-chair hours. When you leave behind a work involving masses of research, world-building, and characters who possess entirely different mindsets than the modern American cube-farmer, you become desaturated.

Writing fantasy or histfic or sci fi (just a few examples, I know) means world building. And when you stop building - researching, occupying, *knowing* a place and its denizens - you become desaturated. It's extremely difficult to be in that world again on a dime, when you have neglected it for a long time.

To the exclusion of much social life, and to no complaint of any kind (I would have been nowhere else), I have focused on my family for a good six months now. With my stepfather's decline stretching across eight years, my immersion has been NOTHING next to my mom's. (To say nothing of the man himself, which seems cruelly self-involved.) But, as family circulates through all our lives, so has his failty.

And, yeah, I saw that typo. But it fits. Let's make it a word: failty. (Perfectly cromulent.)

A loved one's failty is the job and the beloved duty of those who care for him - caring, in the emotional sense, inevitably comes with caring in the custodial sense, if we live long enough. And writers often are alive, and love other people (often - not always!), and so we get distracted.

Hell, writers get distracted easier'n magpies, we all know that. How else would writing blogs ever survive?



Coming out of distraction ... there are levels, for a world-building author. You can still write about the peculiarity of someone's gaze (har), or some contained scene that exists within the greater context, but doesn't require reference to the context, with all the researched or invented knowledge of the world within easy recall.

Still, sitting down to the manuscript as a whole is terrifying. "I don't remember the context for the earliest anti-semitic riots in Christendom" or "Oh geez, how OLD was this character at this point?" I'll be frank: I can even forget who was alive when, and continuity in historicals can get so detailed you can screw up some other part of the book even noodling with what you think of as a contained scene. Containers leak, and sooner or later you've piddled your continuity all over. And cleanup can be death-defying.

(Literally - see also, that bit about forgetting who's even alive when.)

It's been a LONG time since I was doing the "W" part of the WIP.


It's always been the case with me, that I can read something I wrote and, if enough time has gone by, it won't even feel like reading my own work. Even being able to recall constructing a scene, the product of the work put in still seems fresh to me, unfamiliar. There is much brain science here, underlying the way authors say "I am a conduit" - but basically, the stream of consciousness we navigate doesn't always seem like it runs through our brains as it does a greater dynamic in which our souls are mere passengers.

(Yeah, and WOW on that piece of work. I *told* you I haven't been writing! Be forgiving, please. I'm making up lame pun-words at this point; you knew the risks, reading this.)

This unfamiliarity can be freshness, but it's also symptomatic of losing the headspace. The fixtures of research and writing are important as you keep going, but are all too easily rewired incorrectly, or even lost.

As long as it's been since I was writing the WIP: it's even longer since I was researching it.



And there it is, perhaps ...

Perhaps my "in" is with research, rather than writing.

Sometimes the ass-in-the-chair isn't scripting out a scene ... sometimes, it's mapping what happens where. What to use, and what doesn't serve. Who needs to be where, rather than the dialogue they provide once they're in situ.

Maybe I need to get myself in place - remember the place - before I try saying what happens in it.


A thought. I'll think about that, then.

Mourning.

I would hardly be the first, and it's hardly the first time I've thought this myself - but the loss, through the 20th century, of traditional mourning practices in the United States is also a loss of an important signal between us as humans. It's been tempting, since my stepfather's death, to find some way to communicate, without having to have awkward conversations with strangers or acquaintances, that I have just endured a loss. With even the black armband all but vanished, mourning itself is an awkward proposition anymore.

There has been an increasing sense, for me, that it's time to move on. Nobody has pressed this upon me, but with weeks passing at a clip (I almost cannot believe it's been nearly three now), there is an inescapable feeling that continuing to Have The Feels about my stepfather's death is already drama-queening. That, to be frank, there is only the briefest of periods we can get away with not being okay and getting on with the day-to-day.

It would be ... if not nice, then certainly convenient, to have an unspoken signal of mourning. If one is to get on with the day-to-day, not having to *speak* about the loss of a loved one would certainly facilitate that. But the human heart is what it is, and it still hurts when people you're not sure even "know about it" register no sympathy. There is confusion - do I tell this person I see every day? Why should I have to do that? It feels like dramatics to lay that on people - particularly when you're not sure whether they know already. Some people won't speak because it's been more than a few days, and the news-cycle of life has sailed. Some people won't speak because they are sensitive to the pain of loss. Some people won't speak because they are awkward with the subject. Some people won't speak because they do not know. As the bereaved, it would be easier to know - is this person in ignorance, or are they being kind? It HELPS to understand.

So much of communication is nonverbal.

And so, if I had a signal, I could at least understand the words that do come toward me. And I could also communicate this important thing about myself, without having to stop time in the workroom to say, "Yeah, my stepfather just died." And leave someone feeling VERY awkward.

My guess is, this is one more gift Americans have accidentally or heedlessly imposed upon the world. In the rush to imprint our informality, nonconformity, and expectations upon human interaction, we have obliterated some forms of signal someone figured wasn't necessary, and over time the social enforcement that is conformity (har) ended up killing off this branch of etiquette. Uncomfortable, restrictive, depressing, perhaps even importunate upon the carefree (har) lives of other individuals.

Goodbye, mourning. Seriously, has anyone seen real mourning since Jackie Kennedy? I can't so much as remember consistently black garb at funerals; my mom, as it happens, wore poppy-red over a red and black dress, to the funeral inspiring me to discuss this whole thing. She is a great believer in the reaffirmation of life in vivid (the word means lively, after all) color.

I wore black. He was a bit more traditional. And he deserves to be mourned.

Indeed, since he died, I have kept my wardrobe more on the sober side ever since. If I can't go around in mourning jewelry (that people will understand as such, as opposed to thinking I just picked coz I'm goth-ly tinged), at least I can calibrate my mien to less flamboyance. And wear *less* jewelry. I actually applied a shot of brown hairspray to cover the blue hair, in fact, before the funeral; and at least once or twice since. I'm not even wearing highlighting cosmetics these days; bright eyes just seem inappropriate. (And the simpler the eye makeup, the less smear when I slip and find myself crying. In the middle of a meeting. Because: dork. In mourning.)

Three weeks. And already, I find myself embarrassed to even SAY "I am in mourning" (except to that one actual human telemarketer who called, and I could not take it). In the culture I've grown up in, mourning itself is unseemly, because it imposes upon those around us the distasteful necessity of sensitivity, or just the reminder of mortality. Mourning for three WEEKS, well. That is just melodramatic.



And yet, I am impelled to say - at least here - he deserves more than weeks. And what he has taught me, perhaps especially in his own final week, which was horrific ... will stay with me for the rest of my life. I still don't understand everything I saw and experienced, and it's both something to process and also to extrapolate from: for all I went through the eternity and power and heartbreak of his deathbed, my mom has been enduring as a caregiver for years now. His decline, in fact, goes back eight years - I still remember the Mother's Day lunch we shared, when we had to hold his arm back out to the parking lot.

Mom is still learning, too. Just how long this road has been. How, bit by bit, her own liberty to move in the world was curtailed - sometimes by my stepfather's will (he developed terrified and aching separation anxiety), and always by his frailty. How she did it all herself, and kept him home.

Six months ago, I was firmly of the belief that I would NEVER die in a hospital. My own dad's death left me sure it was barbaric and awful. My own dad's death came fast, though.

Now, I am not so sure. Being home might be nice, if I could be assured of sudden death (and that The Poobahs would not starve). It has an allure - who would wish to be in a hospital at the end?

But a slow death at home ... knowing that I could be alone, is that something to sign up for in all eagerness? Not that I'm interested in artificial prolongation, but the variables in horror - if I were alone, and broke a hip (my stepfather's final crisis was a break, and this is often a precipitating factor for those already in decline), what would I endure, ensconsed at home yes, but immobilized, in pain ... ?

Even with caregivers, death at home isn't some peaceful slipping away in one's own bed. Indeed, a standard bed is a horrible, dangerous place. Only after a hospital bed was delivered did my stepfather subside from cruel restlessness and the torture of his broken bones. And by "subside" I do not mean he found comfort. Only some respite, and that incomplete itself.

I learned from him; and sat with him, and tried to give him silence. Sound made him uncomfortable, so I stopped even indulging myself telling him how much I loved him. Or that he could go on. We told him that a lot. He didn't need to hear it, he wasn't holding out for permission to die.


And this too, I learned from him ... death doesn't always answer to the pretty stories we apply to it. It's not always a saga of fulfillment, someone waiting until an important figure comes to their side and releases them. It's not even always a question of release. The man my stepfather was? He had life left, and he was going to use it all up. All of it. Where for six years, he literally begged for death, once it announced it was come, he wrung out of his body the last *iota* of life left to him. Death wasn't impatient for him; those of us around him were.

It is a harrowing thing, a week long deathbed. Human chatter becomes intolerable, and I understand his responses when it was pushed on him, or shot over him as if he were barely there. He was there.

Even outside the room where he lay, the prognostications of "when" ... the stories about crows haunting us, or passed family members coming to take him away ... were not merely exhausting, they became irrelevant quickly as he kept on living on ... and we undoubtedly crossed into distasteful territory, more than once. People coming and going, speaking loudly of meals once shared, or playing music he would have hated ... crossing with those who came to sing, to pray, to just be beside him.

I think (and this may just be a story I tell myself) I became more silent as the days passed, simply because that was the only gift I had left to give to him. I stopped typing one day, because I felt the sound of my keystrokes, even, were too much to bear. I didn't hold his hand constantly, I stopped telling him he was the best stepfather ever, or that I loved him, or how much he amazed me.

I just never stopped kissing his head. Breathing the smells of him - not all of them beautiful. And yet, I both miss the scent of him and find myself having a sort of PTSD series of flashbacks to the smell that seemed most emblematic of him in his last year or so. The smell of his death began long before he ever broke a bone.



I miss him, and I love him, and I mourn him, and just thinking it makes me weep silently.

One of the funniest people I ever knew.

Someone who, never having been a father before, took on our whole family when he was not a strapping youth, and who found ways to laugh alongside us. Great G-d, it was not always easy - for him, or for us. The first years were difficult.

But the past eight? The past six? The years since my brother's family moved, and it's been me, mom, and him? The time it took for me to go from reluctance, to content, to tenderness?

I am blessed to have had these years.

Their passing deserves observation.

My stepfather deserves mourning.

Meta-for

The old metaphor of life, like a candle, flaring up before it goes out ... really isn't strictly poetic. When you reduce them to lowest terms - that fire, and life, are energy processing systems - they are the same thing, fundamentally. A wick left on its own will burn until all its paraffin is gone or it sinks into its own matter, self-snuffing. Life seems similar; we eat, we burn - and, though human beings of course also do so much more than this processing, the end of fuel means the end of life.

What is rarely displayed is just how efficiently the human system burns, sometimes.

I put the blog on pause to wait out a system at its end ... and here, on day six, we still are waiting. Life is almost cruelly tenacious. And, like a candle, life can gutter by flaring up, by burning furiously and then flickering. And even then it may not be exhausted.

Life is *alarmingly* tenacious.



The sacred time we place, around birth or marriage or death, the most important things to us ... I have never spent so long, in my life, in this time removed from the world, from everyday life. I have been enclosed in sacred time so long now it may be time to emerge, at least for a day. Only, presumably, to go back inside. It is a dizzying prospect, even though the hermetic seal around us right now is itself rarefied and disconcerting/disorienting.

We are exhausted. The living, and the dying. But I have learned this: though I know I have had periods in sacred time before, thinking I wished it would go on and on ... now I understand in a more immediate way, the truly sacred part of time separated from the everyday, from the world: is that it must be finite. The truly sacred part is re-entering LIFE.

Tomorrow, I may have to do that. Let us see what tonight will bring.

"You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to."

25 years ago now, having left my marriage and come home to Virginia, I found myself in a job with one of the best managers I've ever known, a woman I'll call C. C managed a keen balance between getting the ratty jobs done but finding each employee's talents, and playing to them. So it was that, as a secretary, I ended up assisting the guy who was writing a book. And the IT guy. Writing our newsletter. And, by the end, taking care of orphan clients (we were an insurance and financial services agency).

It was just at the moment I was about to be sent to Minnesota in February for securities training that I left that gig. But I never did forget that manager, and C stands out to this day as one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. And I've worked with some great, wise people.

All this time later, I have found a position where I get to do my own balancing - still a secretary, but one with decades more experience on the resume, and in a company/with a team where I have been able, almost singlehanded, to define my job. I get to play to my own strengths now.

Not long ago, I was thinking again about how I ended up being a secretary. Yeah, it was the early and mid-80s that formed me, and yeah I was VERY much an underachiever during my early career (though, looking at that job I mentioned above - maybe not so lacking in gumption as I have told myself for so long now) ... but nothing was stopping me from pursuing some more specific or lucrative or creative ambition.

But, the thing is: my parents always told me, "You can do anything you set your mind to."

Here is the problem: they never gave me specifics. Mom might occasionally talk about things *she* would wish to do, or which she found prestigious.

But neither my mom nor my dad ever did as C did: took up the thread of what I loved, or was good at (which were not entirely the same thing), and revealed to me the particular things my talents or my abilities could lead to. Nope, not even my dad. And he was a professor - a student advisor. His very life and career were dedicated to pushing people toward success.

Or ... maybe just to knowledge. To understanding those concepts he himself taught, or to harnessing those from other disciplines, which his students were studying. Synthesizing these to the tools to reach their specific goals.

My dad was encouraging to a fault - but the fault was, he just opened the doors wide. He provided no guide but "anything" - and that was too much. Overwhelming, or under.

I have always known that what I do is "less" in the eyes of other people; nobody's subtle about it. I basically fell into it to make a living. Doing what I do was not a dream, wasn't something I *sought*. I have made it mine, and I'm not complaining nor regretting. But it, in the barest and least freighted, but clearest sense of the phrase, "is what it is."



I could do anything I set my mind to. Sure. But in high school, I already knew I was directionless.

And MOST OF US ARE as teenagers. And that is okay.

But then majoring in Theater (or, insufferably, Theatre/Dance, at my insufferable alma mater) never was going to get me famous and wealthy and yield a successful movie star at the end of college.

(To which I now say: Thank MAUD.)

But it wasn't getting me anywhere else, either. Working on the crew was pizza money and fun, not a career trajectory. Our department wasn't good enough to provide one of those, frankly.

And I could type.

So I fell into my first jobs, my early talents - whatever they might have been - sublimated to make a living, and over the years I've done well, or just done *enough*, and scrabbled and fought my way to giving a damn ... and here we are.



I am proud of my work, and I love what I do. But don't ever think that this was my fantasy. Or even my calling. It was barely my *aptitude*, even, for a while there.





This morning, musing to a friend at work that my hair was looking particularly teased-and-tapered in an 80s sort of way, I pulled up Beauty and the Beat on my phone, and revisited that time before directionlessness became ... well, to borrow one of the Go-Go's song titles, Automatic.

The Go-Go's, I think, may seem a bit bugglegum and maybe even gimmicky these days. But that first album, steeped in 1981 and its New Wave-ness, was not a feather-light pop concoction. There is a menace in the chords. This album is bouncy, but it's bouncing on bruises, and it's propulsive. (Automatic is very dark and affecting. It *still* hits me in a very deep place, perhaps the more for life's experience rather than less.)

And this album is inextricably linked to the one person, before C, who ever pointed me at anything specific.

It was my brother.

I can't remember how it came up, and how it ever seemed "real" at all - and, the fact is, the moment of this memory may not have lasted more than a few days. But my brother, for some reason, excitedly encouraged me to get a band together, like the Go-Go's. To cover them, for Stunt Talent Night. He pointed to Kathy Valentine, and said I could do what she did.

It didn't change my life - or, at least, it didn't set me on a path. But my brother was the only family member who ever looked at anything in me, and pointed to anything at all. He didn't say "You can do anything you set your mind to."

He said, "You could do THAT."


I was too shy. I didn't know any musicians. Time ticked on, the moment passed, I never did it. Years later, I still entertained the odd fantasy of being a drummer - or, later still, a lead singer. But instead I watched Beloved Ex do it, and was still too shy. And never thought to connect to the many musicians we did know then, to try to become one of them. Well, never thought of it seriously. Never had the confidence to try.

And I had a job. And hadn't, perhaps, divested myself of the vague idea I might become wealthy and famous by sitting around waiting, hopefully being 80s-foxy enough for the world just to arrange its attention and money around me. Or maybe being a writer. Or just getting by, day to day.

There were a lot of years of getting by, long periods of time lived day to day.

And, not in the least ironically at all, it was my brother, again, who pointed me at something, years later. Aged 35, he asked me to go to a writers' conference ... and we all know how that has gone. Still the world has not arranged itself around my ridiculous success. But at least I consider myself something more than a 'nartist now.


I don't wish things had gone some other way. My life is an awfully good one to live, and the means to my living never has been the most important thing to me (the people I work with are, though). The idea of an alternative life in which What I Do *was* more important is no source of regret for me; perhaps in that life, my soul would not have been the one I have here and now, and my soul means everything to me.

No, I don't wish things had gone differently at all.

Just: looking at my parents. Thinking of the way C managed the people she worked with. I'm actually just surprised it *didn't* go differently. And curiously grateful I failed to have certain dreams ... ? What I did have was people like C, and others, and enough privilege to say I've made my way successfully, even if not prestigiously.


And I'm doubly grateful for that big brother, too. Turns out - he's actually even more special than I understood. Back in those years when I idolized him so, and didn't even know why.

Almost my birthday, and all I want is death

This post is a barely-edited version of an email I sent this morning. It's funny how trains of thought actually seem to create their own tracks and destinations.



Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...


"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.

Sometimes, being a writer is weird."


-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope

The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.

Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.

The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.

So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.

Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.

It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.


Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.

This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.

Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.

This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.

It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.

They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.

And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.

And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.

I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.

Christmas is When We're Together

Three years ago, my mom and stepfather, D, and I postponed Christmas a day because both of them had pneumonia, or the flu or something. I don't recall the problem so much as the beautiful day out with Pen-Pen, and the nice, quiet holiday the three of us shared.

The quiet time with just us three has been the nature of Christmas long enough that it is tradition now. But we are willing to change that, and this year the advent of my brother and nieces was a welcome change. D has been ailing for about seven years now, and at long last, the doctors have said it "won't be long." I'm not sure either my mom or I are genuinely capable of  rasping that he ever can die, after so long doing poorly, but logically it's "real" enough we know this is the last family Christmas, probably.

So it was an extra pity when my brother, then both nieces, and finally D, all came down with the flu.

Christmas has ended up still being sort of a small affair for us, even with twice the population. My nieces have been great troupers, putting up with a huge houseful of relations yesterday, most of the day, and opening presents this evening almost as if they were not half-dying, missing out on snow at home, and far far away from their own comfortable beds and puppies.

Tomorrow is fake Sunday. Run the fam to the airport, come home, nap, eat something. We've had Christmas early, and - as far as this can be said given the circumstances - it was pretty lovely.

May yours, if you celebrate, be merry and bright.

As for me, it's about time for a long winter's nap. So Merry Christmas (etc./or not) to all, and to all a good night!

Squees and Thanks

Thanksgiving didn't turn out as planned, but oh I do love the quiet holidays that are just me, mom, and my stepfather. He has been ailing for seven years now, but the point has come where doctors are starting to recommend stopping recurring procedures, and the slowdown he is in now feels somewhat different from previous periods when he has felt low. So, though I'd invited them to my house, at about 1:30 on Thanksgiving day, when I was pulling the turkey breast out to tent it for its final phase, grabbed the broccoli and sweet potato dishes, and went to their house.

When your mom is in tears, the dishes you've twice-washed and spot-inspected lose all significance.

But our day, which is possibly the last quiet-holiday time the three of us will share, was lovely. He was up most of the time I was there, and dressed even. We had a few little laughs; his grace is at times the greatest blessing for others, in the face of his pain. I deeply love my stepfather. Another blessing, and one I did not see coming eleven or twelve years ago.

As much as those I love must endure, my own life is richly blessed and comfortable right now. I still miss Mr. X. But there is someone that remarkable in this world, for me to miss. That is inestimable.

At four years in, my "new" job is now entirely mine. I love the work I do, and I like and respect the people I get to work with. It was scary to leave public service, but I have learned that a form of service that is much more direct has great rewards, and what we do is honorable, sometimes fun, and gives to our community in ways that are new to me and mean so much. All this, and at four years there's a bump in vacation accrual, so woo!

Gossamer and Penelope are still the finest little monsters anyone could ask to live with. Goss is soft and gentle - and preternaturally forgiving of his great lummox of a human. Pum is soulful and warm, both magnificent and insouciant. They make me laugh every day, and then they warm my heart.

Writing ... I'm doing that. Not enough - but is it ever enough, in any writer's mind? What is happening with it is good. That counts.

Christmas: we are looking forward to my brother and BOTH nieces coming for a visit.

And homeownership ... ahhh, homeownership! Here may be the most immediate squee for today. In three days from now, I will have a new run of five kitchen cabinets. One wall has always been the home of every bit of storage in this 67-year-old house - and it's not too bad, actually; lowers, as well as uppers all the way to the ceiling, and I have eleven-foot ceilings, so storage is significant.

So 'long about my birthday (suffice it to say, this was over half a year ago), I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore a couple or three times, and found a pair of midcentury cabinets which will coordinate nicely with the originals. Since, then, I have poked now and then at all of them - removing the old black hammered hinges from mine, spackling and repainting the uppers (white), throwing around a bad paint job (black) on the lowers, re-hinging all of the uppers including the "new" ones.

Today is the day to remove the lower doors and old hardware, give them a spackle and sanding, and tomorrow paint 'em black.

MONDAY ... comes the handyman. He will cut the crown molding and patch the circa-1950 hole in the wall that was all we had in the kitchen for a vent back then. Install the cabinets, AND the ventless range hood. And all the drawer and cabinet handles. He's even going to tidy up a spot of water damage (long since resolved) that predates my 16 year ownership. The tile I ordered isn't here yet, but we'll call this guy back. Or cross fingers it'll arrive today! :)

Oh my gosh. In three days, I will have new kitchen cabinets. I'll be able to put away my crock pot, cookie jar, lots of things. So exciting!

And on the first day of The Big Holiday Family Visit, I also will have a brand new chair. Mom and I recently went chair (s)hopping at a couple of stores, and on my own time I tried at least one more place, on a quest to find The Chair. The chair you come home to, that will welcome you and take care of you all evening after work. The chair that is kind of foxy, but also comfortable. And one we saw on the day she and I sallied forth was all that, but also had remarkably good BACK SUPPORT. It was the chair that stuck in my head through a few more chairs and another shopping trip. And it will be mine.

This is the kind of chair that makes a big difference in a home. It's the kind of chair that makes a big difference in most days, too. So, with this, and the major changes in the kitchen, some really big improvements for the holidays. After The Great Bookcase Project of the summer of 2017 (three. seven-foot. bookcases, y'all. Don't even tell me you're not jealous), and the final completion of the it-seemed-neverending basement job, this is going to make for one HECK of an organized domicile. And just in time to clutter it all up with Christmas decorations!

Still life with much clutter

Hoping everyone had a splendid, blessed, and joyous Thanksgiving, and that the best is yet to come.

Are you ready ... ???

This is what I have

Right now, I am sitting on my little loveseat with Gossamer, as he sleeps. He's doing that cat thing, where he's got one paw up against my leg. Just touching me. I reach down and take one of his little back feet in my hand, and his body is utterly relaxed. There is trust with him so complete that having his foot grasped in his sleep doesn't even faze him.

Most people know, it's no small thing to get this level of trust with a puddy. And it's not just me that he trusts; this isn't just a bond between two creatures. This is a boy so secure in his safety in his world that he just doesn't worry about little things like a random touch when he is *asleep*. The most vulnerable possible moment. And his relaxation is that complete.

Penelope used to be the sort of pup who would wig out and bark if there was an unfamiliar car parked in the neighborhood when we took our walks. I mean, her back would go up, she was afraid of everything. And a bit of a protector, even then.

She is still wary of the unfamiliar, and will always be exciteable with new people. She is a dog. But the animal she is now, compared to the little baby bag of wiggles I adopted? She is magnificent, and I love her more all the time.

The things I am proud of in this life have always related to the people I love, and who are generous to love - and even respect - me in kind. It means the world to me that any animal I was ever blessed to live with felt safe like this. When Sweet Siddy La used to try to live in my armpit because she was afraid of storms ... this big, strong, brave girl - was turning to ME when she felt fear? I was the thing she trusted to keep her safe?

Holding a limp, warm cat's paw in your hand is so much more than a little gesture of affection on a Saturday afternoon.

Loving my pets. It's not just an "aww they're so cute" thing in my life. It is an honor. It is the deepest kind of pleasure.

It's also fun, pretty much every day of our lives. Little Poobahs.

Lolly

Five years ago right now, I was alone. More alone than I'd been for nine years, nine months.

Sidney. Sweet Siddy-la, my Lolly, my Lolly-ya, Stinky Tuscadero, Funky Monkey, pup-head. Bebe'. Gooderest t'ing.

La was about four when I adopted her, and she was, as I still say to the Poobahs currently livening up my life, a particular favorite girl of mine. By the age of fourteen, she was still fairly spry and healthy, but she'd had some setbacks in the months before she died.

I remember all the lead up, I remember the way she lay on her bed next to the couch (a large old ottoman, I brought it downstairs while I tapped on my laptop and answered emails and such; the floor looked so hard, and she was closer to my touch) and put her head on a pizza crust I gave her - loving it, but unable to eat it.

She never got up again.

My mom came, with the new Buick she and my stepfather had bought, and she and I lifted Sidney lock stock and big bed into the back of it, and we drove to the vet. I know she was with me while Siddy died, and we spent time together after, but I do not remember the after.

I remember going back to the vet when ... she was taken care of. To pick up her ashes. I still have them, though never have really known quite what to do with them. She lives in the guest room. (My dad's ashes do not. Today was perhaps not a good day to read this. But then ... maybe so.)

One memory wraps around another, and one love skeins through others, never necessarily comes to an end.

And now I get to love Gossamer and Penelope.

And still hope I will ever be good enough for either of them.

Like Ray-ye-yain On Your Admin Day!

"They" always say to be careful what you wish for. Let us add to that the codicil, perhaps, to be careful what you're thankful for.

Today was Administrative Professionals Day, or if you prefer, this week is AP week. I, of course, prefer "secretary", but that has been done to death on this blog. For now, anyway. Let it be said, the memories are still kind, regarding the one guy I ever worked with who found a Secretaries' Day card. That's thoughtfulness, right there.

And today I said to a couple people how much I like where I work now - how they don't fiddle away excessive funds on expensive dead flowers, but give us things we are likely to use/enjoy/appreciate. Last year, enormous live potted plant arrangements, in my case a big geranium mingled with the spiky fronds of a grass of some sort. It is still with me, just went outside this morning for the new spring. Year before that, it was Harry & David gift boxes - nice fruits and not all sorts of fattening things.

Given the past year and a half or so of working on that waistline and so forth, I particularly treasure the latter point, the absence of waist-busting shows of appreciation.

Naturally, putting too fine a point on that item was poor thinking on my part. This year's gift came from clients. Translation: a Taste of Chicago box, filled with such goodies as a cheesecake sampler (four kinds) and a true Chicago pizza from a famed place I actually have been to.

Thank heavens for family. I have a handy-dandy mom and stepfather close by, and keep them around for just such occasions. And it turned out almost too perfectly, in fact - our usual Friday family night looks bad, as my stepfather has a procedure Friday which will leave him either out of it and/or in pain. And mom had been planning pizza for supper, too.

And, you know, with his ongoing health issues and my mom's extended commitments as caregiver, it doesn't feel awful to show up now and then with a really good treat like that. It seems to break up the grind for her sometimes, and of course an enjoyable meal doesn't go amiss with him.


The title above refers to the amused chagrin you can feel, bragging that your employer - even while so massively involved with almost every variety of food on the continent - doesn't fatten you up ... and the happiness that when they ruin your brag, you can turn around and dent the caloric damage by celebrating family night a couple days early.

When your stepfather can enjoy eating, and your mom was planning for pizza.

Droppin' Science

On Saturday, I went to the March for Science in Washington, DC.

Though I am the kid of a physics professor, my own field of study was Theatre (sic/ugh) and Dance (also sic; it was that small a department), and I became a secretary. But dad's influence in my life endures, of course. And also I care that our country should not impose upon itself the very Dark Ages I'm always saying are a myth.

The day before the March, I drove up to Maryland to stay with my dearest and oldest friend, The Elfin One, and her family. She and I went on our own, but not before enjoying some pretty wonderful family adventures. Starring rather a lot of science!

TEO was always the smart one between us. No very great trick when it comes to ME, of course, but she is and always was natively brilliant, and is a teacher (not of science).

Almost within minutes of my arrival at their home, the heavens burst forth, and we had a ten-minute, torrential storm. After eight-ish traffic jams making a 100-mile trip drag on for upwards of four hours, I was glad I'd missed being IN it, by that much. Still, I do enjoy a good storm. And this one came with HAIL.

Younger son and mom and I went outside to investigate the hailstones when it subsided and gave way to more sunshine than I'd seen all day. I was the one who explained the rising/falling cycle of updrafts and accumulation creating the layers of a hailstone, almost like dendrochronological rings. I also pointed out to them how the steam was rising off the street, using the spiff sunglasses TEO had commented on. Because they are polarized glasses, they cut glare. I didn't explain the mechanics of light waves and the glasses' control of same via polarization, but they're still a gee-whiz exemplar of science.

For the evening, we had a wonderful meal prepared by TEO's husband (science has proven, men can cook), and then he read one of the kids' books out loud for a while as we made our signs. I got a bit of permanent marker on my nail. It is still present, three days on. Science!

The next morning, I wore a shirt of my dad's from CEBAF - the original name of Jefferson Labs (or "Jeffy Labs" as the geeks I personally knew liked to call it when they changed the name), the national Accelerator. The shirt is a double-bonus for me, as it dates to 1991, and is Star Trek themed. Well, Star Trek: The Next Generation (probably my least favorite of the series), but it was all we had at the time.

I also wore a necklace with a few charms on it, one of which is the companion to a pair of rutilated quartz charms I once gave to my nieces. TEO thought at first this little bauble might be a tiny bottle with something in it, perhaps something of my dad (she may have feared I had his ashes with me, come to think of it, but I would not have brought that into their home, they are Jewish and that would be unguestmanslike of me). So we showed this to the boys, and I explained inclusions and we talked about how rocks have veins, something like our bodies do.

So before we even got to the march, we were SEEING (and spontaneously - we did not have to force science into the visit; and kids do get into these odd and neato things) plentiful wonders courtesy of scientific understanding.

On the Metro, TEO and I immediately found companions with the same destination. We chatted and shared signs, and this went on all the way into the city.

Off the train, it was immediately mucky. So it goes. We headed along the wide walkways I haven't trod in probably thirty years, joyously surrounded by others going the same way. That the one guy who liked our signs and suggested we get our pictures taken with the sole religious protester we saw all day looked like Pretty Caucasian Jesus was a good laugh, and of course that's my type anyway, so we enjoyed a little irony and I got to enjoy a pretty face to boot.

As for religion ... well. My dad told me all my life, he was a scientist precisely BECAUSE what G-d had built was so exciting to him he felt it was worthy to study it. Take that, kids I went to grade school with, who used to tell me my dad couldn't believe in G-d because he was a scientist. Also: ugh.

In fact, I think there were many people of faith (read: not just Protestant Christians) there. More than anything else, there were people of integrity. Belief in something greater than themselves, whether that wears the face anyone recognizes as G-d or not. We were photographed many times, and we photographed others. We saw a Nichelle Nichols sign and a Carrie Fisher sign (interestingly, I saw no male Trek or Wars character/actor signs - but I do not call my study of these signs any indicator of conclusions to be drawn; the minuscule sample would not stand up to peer review). We saw only one Lorax, but it was a good Lorax, complete with his sign, "UNLESS" ...

TEO and I were there for hours, and in the cold and rain we heard the voice of a child from Flint, Michigan, the passion of Maya Lin, good music - many voices. Our signs wilted and drooped, but stayed intact for us bravely throughout the deluge and beyond. We finally "retired" them at The Castle at the Smithsonian. Our feet were profoundly wet, and pants up to the knees. Mine were wet down to the knees as well, and my jacket (unfortunately covering up that CEBAF tee) was all but pointless by the end of the day. TEO recalled ruefully the science of wet denim and rolled up her jeans, to minimal effect. My own pants grew from about a 31" inseam, weighted down by water and textile fatigue, to something on the order of a 34". My shoes were not even dry by the time I returned home late that night. My socks were sodden. But Penelope (and her inquiring scientific nose) was fascinated by the scents of Washington, of rain, of the thousands of people's footsteps we had shared, and the several dogs we saw as well, all collected in my clothes.

But we had a brave and a reaffirming few hours. We were inspired, and people said nice things to us about our signs, and just generally. People can be lovely things, sometimes.

And so, because there was no food inside the officially-barriered confines of The March itself, when we grew hungry, we reviewed our feelings about what we'd set out to accomplish, and agreed: "we've checked the boxes." It was time to leave, even though the actual marching part was about to begin. New troops were still arriving. We exited, to leave them space. We went back up the Metro a ways, and found a good, warm sandwich to eat. And then made our way home, to shuck wet things and have a lie-down.

This is the first event I have gone to, since the election. TEO had been to the Women's March, with that younger son of hers, and many of my friends and my beloved family have been to many. I shared this event with all of them, cities away, even a continent away (one Washington and another; nicely bookended?), and perhaps most importantly my oldest, OLDEST (hee) friend and I were able to embark on this together.

A Poem of Sorts

Today, I wrote a poem of sorts to Mr. X in an email ...

http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/2016/01/fractured-light.htmlYes, that wasn't written today. But it's my heart again today.
I want to cut my hair. I want another piercing in my right ear. I want a new tattoo.
I want you.

The thing about cutting my hair ... it would be hard for anyone who has never met me to understand just how "big" a statement that is. My being long-haired is so much a part of who I am it's almost a point of stubbornness. Well, it IS stubbornness. Resistance of my mom's utter loathing for long hair. Resistance of What is Expected of me - of women. Resistance of making anybody happy but myself.

So it's weird, these thoughts - this near-obsession I've been nursing for a couple or three months now, of cutting my hair. I'm forty-nine, for goodness' sakes. I resisted cutting it when I reached A Certain Age - now I want to chop it all off?

But here's the thing.

I look around myself, and more and more women my age - and older - are long-haired, and what they seem to be resisting is their age.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.



When I was very small, I had long hair and bangs for a very short time. Tangles and my sensitive headbone screwed that up for me. I was horrible for my mom to work with, brushing my hair - and so, in the seventies, when super long hair was in, when hippie chic was my equivalent to Disney Princess glamour, I lost my long hair and got a PIXIE cut.

I hated that cut. I hated the shags that followed, and every iteration of NOT LONG HAIR my mom dictated to every stylist she ever dragged me to. I managed longer hair in middle school, but somehow (still under maternal control as under the paternal roof) ended up yet again with Mackenzie Phillips's layers come high school. If you look at the old photos of me at the link above, though, you'll just manage to perceive - I also managed a sort of take on Cyndi Lauper's hair, senior year. The cut as produced by a stylist was as seen in the purple sweater, but as it grew out, I would razor it myself, and it was much shorter. I kept it this way for some time, but eventually I tired of maintaining the shaved-right-side.

(Side note - being My Brother's Little Sister, he of the punk rock and scariness: I did not know at all that shaving one side of my head was the least bit odd, for many years. It honestly was just easier for doing schoolwork - I didn't have to constantly throw my hair out of my own way.)

By my freshman year in college, it was plain old shaggy, and I had my eyes on the prize: out of mom's control, my hair could be under my own control. I grew it out. And grew it, and grew it.

I never got Crystal Gayle with the stuff, but it was long enough at times it'd get caught in my armpits sometimes. Heh. That grossed my sister-in-law out once, when I said that. I never could sit on it, but I've always sat BACK on it. Even today, if I didn't wear it up most of the time, it would be long enough to hang between my back and any seat-back.

But I wear it up most of the time.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.

There was a time I didn't wear my hair up all the time. I liked to let it fly. I wore it differently all the time; one of the hallmarks of my style was the time in my teenage years when someone said to me my hair was different every day. I liked that.

These days, it is limited to knots, braids, and very rarely I'll do a barrette on top (and then I end up knotting the hanging length half the time) or a hair band (and then I end up knotting the hanging length more than half the time).

Even when I am alone at home, I twist it out of the way. The stuff is almost never down.

And these women - a lot of them even older than I - with long hair. I don't like their aesthetics. I don't like the sense they're clinging to youth gone by. The sameness. The sadness. I never had much problem with ageing, even though people do tell me I am relatively poor at it. Jamie Lee Curtis's story about Jessica Tandy has long stuck with me. JLC kicks copious amounts of bootay. And she has uber-short hair: undyed.

Hmm.

And the older I get, the more keeping up with my roots annoys me. I got to about an inch and a half of white showing last month, and my most recent dye job is already growing out. Not obvious to anyone but me - YET - but the point is, the upkeep is constant. And it takes two bottles for me to dye my hair.

Mind you - I LOVE my contrasts - the fair skin and dark hair. The light brown eyes and freckles. Playing with makeup and coming out Morticia.

Hmmmm.

I have said for maybe 15 years now, that when I get around 50 and I have "enough" white hair (my hair is WHITE-white, like my mom's and my grandmother's; not steel, not grey), I'd strip it and cut it. I had images of a 50s style and a body wave, something soft and sophisticated.

With the onset of the earliest symptoms, I think, of menopause, have come more concrete ideas in this direction. It began amorphously - jokes with my friends about using bright color in it, once I do go white. Random interest in certain haircuts. The realization of just how edgy it could be, even before I let it go white. A glossily dark bob, curled. A crunchy zhush of short, crispy layers, framing my face. Letting the bangs grow out. One long, soft dark wave.

And, frankly: the fun I would have, shocking the crap out of everyone I know. Not least of all: my sainted mother. She would love me to cut it, of course. She'll both hate and laugh with anything more subversive I do. She will never believe it. That's a fun mental game, right there - just showing up one day, shorn and  super stylish. Crazy colors or spiky bits or no, she would DIE.

The thoughts: they have become more specific. More focused. And they're sticking with me.

The Gift of the Magi
I had a beautiful moment recently with my beloved friend Cute Shoes. She gave me an absolutely stunning hairpin; a vintage Deco piece, with grey rhinestones. Graceful. Meaningful. Gloriously beautiful. I had my hair down the day she gave it to me, and immediately put it up. I've worn it several times since.

I had all but set an appointment for a cut that very Thursday. Of course I could not bring myself to do it, suddenly.

A few days later, I researched ways to wear a hairpin in short hair. (This is, by the way, almost as tricky as researching ancient Carthaginian women's names.)

The cut I had in mind, I don't know how well it would work ... but hair grows, too. And I have many styles in mind; I plan to change things regularly.



It came over me again today - how exactly I want it to be, how I'd need to explain to a stylist about the inconvenient cowlick on the wrong side. Working out twice in a fitness room filled with wall-sized mirrors, I mentally pictured it. Looking at those high school pictures, I looked at that short-on-one-side thing.



Tonight, I'll let my hair down. And leave it.

And tomorrow, I'll be wearing a beautiful, gorgeous hairpin. And I love you, CS. And I'll figure this thing OUT.

Fröhliche Geburtstag, Herr Professor Doktor Einstein

My grandfathers were not close by in my childhood. One died when I was seven, and the other became very ill for some years. So it was that I adopted Einstein as my granddaddy. He was always there; just above the couch. I'd lie on it, feet up along the backrest, my back twisted along the seat, looking up at him in our cool, shadowed family room.

Portrait of the Old Man by an Artist

 

The painting was done by a student of my father's. He was from Malaysia, and once went home to visit his family. When he came back to school, he brought gifts. I still have the shells he gave me, one thick with mother of pearl, pink-veined and shaped like a fan. The other is a delicate, spiny spiral.

We got close to a number of dad's students when we were kids. I remember some of them so vividly, though none of them have I seen for twenty-five years - and many far, far longer. We had wonderful picnics at our house, volleyball, and hot dogs on the brick grill dad built, too many sweets, and cases of soda from a specialty place called The Poppe Shoppe (I think it was spelled so).

The artist who painted the above piece was one of the early ones. I would have been three or four at his advent. Memory of him is hazy; and yet, I have always been grateful for his kindnesses. So distinct, they still mean something to a toddling moppet near half a century on. And his great talent. The portrait was painted in mere hours, part of an art class he took because he wanted to be well-rounded. It is glorious, and was the great gift my father left me when he died. We discussed it when he was ill; my brother would get the pocketwatch, I the portrait. Nothing - no *thing* - could have meant much more to me, from him. We all love the painting; my mom has wished from time to time that she could have it. But, though I try to be undemanding with her, this I will not give up. It is a very literal legacy.

Dad was a physicist, you see. Einstein was practically a fixture in our family culture, and literally part of the furnishings, in this painting. Dad's students were part of our lives well beyond their graduations; we followed careers, dad received beautiful invitations to important events for them; his university, his colleagues, his advisees and lab assistants were ingrained with us.

The painting is more than a sentimental present, it is the history of our nuclear foursome AND the history of our nuclear understanding in the scientific sense.

The painting is a bold thing, marvelous in its execution, beautiful to look at - formative not only of my philosophy, but very much of my aesthetic. I love its incredibly powerful reds, yellows, negative space. Its seventies mod-ness. Its connection, almost beyond dad, to the *influence* he had in this world, in this place we occupy even now without his presence.

The painting *is* his presence - and it is his absence. That is relativity for you.

A year or so back, I had a contractor out to the house, quoting me a job. As he stood in the front door saying goodbye when he'd inspected the pertinent area of the home, he stopped cold - transfixed. He fell in love with the Einstein portrait instantly, and we ended up talking a good while longer about it, about its presence. Closest I've come to falling in love since Mr. X. I still think about that (the guy didn't get the job in the end, possibly unfortunately).

The presence of the dead can be exquisitely random, and yet it can be predictable. I know every time I go to the dentist, I'll cry - not because I've been hurt, but because the guy I go to was one of my dad's advisees. And he always has memories - such respect, such almost AWE at my dad's intelligence. His goodness. My dad had an elegant expansiveness; he was more than a marvelous teacher, he was a teacher of marvels, and he cared immensely about the students.

I remember the year he went from being the kid on the physics faculty, to being the oldest. Just the right retirements, a couple new hires - boom, suddenly he was the old war horse. He wore it so well.

The thing about the painting. The thing about the student who painted it. The thing about the guy transfixed by the portrait. The thing about my dentist, and the very books I inherited and the dog he never knew and the dog now years-gone, whom dad did love though she was so hard on his lungs ... the thing about the flotsam and the furniture of my life ... is that dad is part of none of it now - not the way he was. But he is part of all of it - and always will be.

My dad is me. He is my brother. He is my mom. He is the reason, and the question, and the answer, and the causation. He is how I came to be. What I hope *to* be. He IS, even still, a good man.

He gave me Einstein. And so did that student.

And all three of them - though not alone, not by a long shot - taught me gratitude. All these things are me.

And old Albert ... he made a good substitute granddaddy, when I had none left to "give me a little bit of that applesauce" or to love, quietly, while grandma took care.

Happy 138th birthday, Herr Professor Dr. Einstein. And thank you for *our* little corner of relativity.



And how has it always escaped me ... that Einstein's birthday is Pi day?

This Day In ...

My dad had been diagnosed terminal about two years previous, but he wasn't one who spent his time dying. He fought the dragon - his attacks of airlessness, the cruelty of pulmonary fibrosis - he took to a wheelchair when he had to, he toted his concentrator. But he lived.

So the day he and mom were alone at the house, and asked me to just come be with them; that was new. He was in bed, and mom had just come home with cell phones; including one for me. Just in case.

Mom's was the FANCY phone. It was a flip. Mine was a little silver sneaker of a thing; rubber buttons, an antenna encased in more rubber. It seemed tiny, and had the brightest blue screen. I figured out how to play with it; producing pings and buzzes and what passed, fourteen years ago, for music on a cell phone. Tinklings and twangs. But it seemed neato.

Dad being a scientist, and just possessed of a curious and analytical mind, he 'gee whizzed' a bit about this new tech, and we spent the afternoon in their bedroom, figuring the little things out.

We spent the afternoon listening to footage and sadness.



It would come as a shock to me, years later, to find that there had been a Space Shuttle disaster just before my dad died. I remembered that day at their house. I had forgotten, utterly, what we'd had on the tube. While we played with the new phones - "just in case" anything happened with dad's condition - we had no idea there would be no condition at all anymore, in just a week.

So that event obliterated my recall of Columbia.



Resentfully, I can relate that I do recall (with painful clarity) the soundtrack of dad's actual final hours. It was Martin Bashir's documentary about Michael Jackson - about which I cared nothing, but which back then was about all there was going, for someone shuttling back and forth between hospital and home, grabbing scraps to eat and scraps of sleep in between thinking "this is the new normal" and ... "this is the last day."

I didn't have cable. Being alone in the house with no sound - even with my Sweet Siddy La there with me; her heartbeat and her sweet face - I could not take it. I would turn on the tube, and there he would be, protesting innocence and normalcy. Seemed to go on all day every day for the sacred time that is Waiting for Death.



The things you remember. Snow in square Xs on the sky lights below dad's room. Moving him to another room. Almost immediately losing his voice, his presence, to morphine. Knowing we'd lose him all the more, never to speak with him again.

Holding his hand. So soft; and that thick, heavy wedding ring, glowing against his grey-mauve skin.

My brother and I had left in the night, mom climbing in the bed to spoon him, as he died. She called us each at about four a.m., and we both arrived back at the hospital at the same moment - having both been listening to the same music on NPR. Something called Autumnal, by Brahms I think it was. It was perfect. Snow and elegiac strains. And holding hands with my brother, possibly the only time in our lives we've ever done that. Walking in through the bewildering route to quiet, and darkness, and mom and dad.

Holding hands. Dad's hands.

The way his muscles tightened on my hand after he had died.



When I was small, dad and I would sit in church, mom in the choir, and he would just lift up one big, warm paw in a gesture so old between us I cannot even place its origin. I would ball up my own paw into a fist, and place it into his. Ball-and-socket dad and kid.

Dad had warm hands all his life, till the diagnosis. Soft, dad was hairy too. Fuzzy Wuzzy was my dad - except, of course, on top of his big round Charlie Brown head. He was warm and reassuringly stocky; not what I can call stout, but solid, firmly on the ground. Not tall, but never a negligible physical presence.

He had this warm, gravelly-gruff voice.

There was a voice mail on that little silver sneaker. I had it for a long time, but after some period they auto-delete. I lost my dad's voice maybe six months after he died.



He was the best.

I miss my dad.

1986, just before the prom
... holding hands ...

Collection

How the Reformation helped to create the nuclear family model, and how Millennials are retrieving a pre-modern way of life. Perhaps The Golden Girls had it “golden” for reasons other than we thought!

How many of us have a default setting that ancient artifacts are the product of male fabrication?
How many of us realize that that sets an assumption of male gaze in early art? What if the earliest goddess figurines were not made by men in worship … but by women, perceiving themselves? Why not? Women made a great deal of art before we started creating history.

The History Blot has had a couple of good digital reconstructions this week. One, a look at the face of Peru's Lord of Sipan, from the pieces of his preserved skull. You can watch the art of the process in the video in fairly amazing detail. Next, a very nice look into a home in Pompeii. There are THREE videos at the HB on this piece, but I included this one as the most instructive of the two shorter clips, for my fellow history nerds. There is a 10:44 minute one that is even more detailed; the mosaic of a dog at the entry indicating a guard dog, and more in-depth consideration of the architecture.