Tag Archives: memoirs

This Is Your Party, Mom!

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My grandfather’s little tax deduction for the year 1934 arrived on New Year’s Eve.  Anne Louise McFarland, my mother, grew up believing that all the fireworks and shouting every year on this day was in honor of her birthday.  I grew up believing something very similar.  My parents didn’t dress up and go out on New Year’s Eve…they dined at home on champagne and escargot and caviar and other delectable treats while listening to “The Midnight Special” on WFMT or to “Die Fledermaus” on TV or video.  When I was old enough to stay up with them, we would sometimes catch the Times Square celebration and then declare East Coast midnight and go to bed an hour early.  But the reason for the season was my mother, not the march of time.  In my late teens, I didn’t go to other people’s parties, I still stayed home…and my boyfriend (soon to be husband) joined us.  We enjoyed the best food and champagne and music and silliness and company without ever having to contend with drunk drivers on the roads.  My mom lives 2,205 miles away from me now, but I am still planning to stay home and drink champagne and eat salmon and listen to wonderful music and think of her.  She is still reason enough for all the joy and love and delight you might see tonight.  I’ll show you why:

Graduation, Radcliffe Class of 1955

Graduation, Radcliffe Class of 1955

This is my mom and dad at her college graduation.  That’s right, she graduated from Radcliffe, the female component to Harvard, at the age of 20.  The woman has brains.  With her late birthday and having skipped a year in elementary school, that means she went to college at age 16, all naive and nerdy with bad teeth and a lazy eye and glasses, but with a curiosity and charm that matured and eventually proved irresistible to my father, who, with money and pedigree and a Harvard degree, was “quite a catch”.  

Ten years later, the family

Ten years later, the family

So, by 1965, she’s a mother of 4 little girls (that’s me, the baby, blonde, aged 3), running a household, volunteering with Eastern Star and the church and a host of other things.  So stylish, so Jackie!  This was Massachusetts, you know. 

Acadia National Park, I think

Acadia National Park, I think

And she’s not afraid to go camping, either.  This was a picnic picture taken by her mother-in-law.  That would explain the handbags and the dress.  My grandmother was never seen anywhere without a handbag and make-up.  My mother was…often!

1978 in California

1978 in California

Fast forward 13 years.  My mother gave birth to a boy when she was 38.  She had 4 willing babysitters surrounding her and a handsome husband now sporting a beard.  She’d also picked up a Masters degree in Church Music.  We moved from Chicago to California where she became more adventurous in cuisine and hiking and music and new volunteer opportunities.  This photo was taken the last Christmas that all her children were alive.  My sister Alice (far left) died the next August.

1985 - Proud grandparents

1985 – Proud grandparents

A month after she’d turned 50, my mother became a grandmother for the first time.  She’d also survived breast cancer by electing to have major surgery, something her own mother had done 10 years earlier.  She was housing and caring for her barely mobile mother and raising a pre-teen son at this time as well.  Do you see a grey hair?  No?  Neither do I.  My mother is amazing.

1989b

Christmas and New Year's 1989

Christmas and New Year’s 1989

Mom turns 55.   She has 4 grandchildren, a 16-yr old son, and her mother has just died.  She’s volunteering as a docent at the San Jose Historical Museum, a position she will hold for more than 20 years, specializing in their music department. 

Summer 1994 - babysitting the grandkids

Summer 1994 – babysitting the grandkids

Here, she’s 60.  My husband and I are traveling in Europe for our 10th anniversary, and she and Dad take our kids to the beach cottage for a few weeks.  My husband survived double bypass surgery on his heart two years earlier.  Yeah, Mom came out then, too, to take care of the kids…and me.  Who has the energy to be with 4 kids (aged 3, 5, 7, & 9) at the beach for two weeks at the age of 30, let alone twice that?  My mother.  Although she did let me know (graciously) that it wasn’t easy. 

13 years later, back at the beach

13 years later, back at the beach

In 2007, Mom came out with my sister and brother to see my daughter graduate from college.  We all went to the cottage together again.  This was my husband’s last trip: he died the following February.  My father is not with us on this vacation.  He is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, a condition he had for 7 years before his death.  My mother visited him several times a week while he needed skilled care and played the piano for all the residents, jogging memories with old popular tunes and supporting the hymns during chapel services.

March 2010 - photo credit DKK

March 2010 – photo credit DKK

My father died in March of 2010.  I had been widowed for 2 years.  My kids and I flew back to California for his memorial service, and Dad’s ashes were buried next to my sister’s and my husband’s.  My mother invited the family back to her house and we gathered around the piano again.  She played and sang and laughed and cried, and I did, too, right by her side.  My mother and I are alike in many ways, and I am so glad, proud and grateful to be a woman like her.  I see her smile, I hear her voice, I taste her cooking and her tears, and feel her spirit flowing around and through me all the time.  We’re going to party tonight, Mom.  Miles be damned!  Happy Birthday!  I love you!

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Thankful

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Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!  It’s Steve’s favorite holiday, and we’ve eaten turkey for the last 3 dinners.  First, it was the 20-pounder I cooked for us and his mom, aunt, sister and brother-in-law.  That occasion included a lot of cleaning up and rearranging books so that the book business didn’t take over the dining & living room.  The result of that work is being able to provide a comfortable place for people to gather, relax, feast, listen to music, and converse.  Holding a safe space open for life to unfold is a responsibility that I willingly accept, and I am thankful that I have figured out how to do that with the resources available to me.  I am very thankful for my partner and for the home that we have made together.  The day after Thanksgiving, we went down to visit my children in Illinois.  With all 4 of them, plus my daughter’s boyfriend and her godfather, we made 8.  She cooked another turkey and we brought our leftovers to share for this second feast.  I am thankful for my children, for the unique and wonderful people they are and for the fact that I have a healthy, happy relationship with each of them.  Yesterday, we drove home, past Glacial Park where we had our first date, back to our clean and tidy little duplex apartment.  Steve went back to work, I took a nap, and later fixed some more leftover turkey for supper.  Oh, but just before that, something else happened.  I had a good cry.  You see, my oldest daughter went shopping on Black Friday and bought…a wedding dress.  All by myself, back at home, I put on a Louis Armstrong CD, “What A Wonderful World”.  I felt happy and lonely, missing her father who died in 2008.  I wrote a sentimental bit of poetry, drank some vodka & cranberry juice, and let it flow.  Life moves and changes and goes on.  We are the bearers of our own memories, the crucible of our own journeys, and no one else shares that responsibility with us.  That can feel very lonely sometimes, but it also feels satisfying.  I am filled with the weight of my life and still have room for more.  For that, I am especially thankful.

November – My Thanksgiving table
Scholar & Poet
Family
Conversation
Relax

 

At Table

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My mother quoted something to me over the phone this morning: “At table, we never grow old,” I think it goes.  I am savoring this idea, thinking of birthdays and family members, extended in geography and generation.  Steve’s sister had a birthday wish in April to dine at a French restaurant here in Wauwatosa.  That finally was accomplished last Saturday night, but as her husband’s 50th and my 50th are coming up next week, we decided that we were also celebrating our birthdays…and then we included Steve’s so he wouldn’t feel left out, even though his is 3 months away.  We spent over 3 hours at a table in the front window of the restaurant, sampling cheeses, drinking French wine, dining on lamb and pheasant and dissolving chocolate pastries on our eager tongues.  We laughed a lot.  We talked about philosophy and aging and Mars and mold allergies.  I was welcomed into this threesome who have been best friends for 30-47 years as a 10%-er…meaning I’ve only known them for 3.  But they like me!  They really like me!  That feels good.  My mother will be hosting my siblings and niece for dinner on Sunday.  My brother’s birthday is Saturday.  My brother-in-law’s birthday is the following Saturday.  I’m sure they will be dining for a good three hours or more, too, talking about philosophy and music and zoology and whatnot.  I wish I could be there in body and tastebuds, but I will be there simply in spirit. 

When a bottle is poured and glasses are raised, when family gathers in the same place year after year, when we face each other in candle light, Time in its immaterial essence becomes irrelevant as well.  Am I 10, learning to sip a drink and taste its fragrance for the first time?  Am I 20, listening to my beloved ask my father for my hand?  Am I 30, looking at my four children settling in next to their grandparents?  Am I 40, appreciating my parents through my own experience as a parent?  Am I 50, holding my husband and father in a deep, inward place as I use my hands, my voice, my mind to embody all of us?  I am all of these ages, and others besides, when I sit at table and nourish myself, body and soul, in this banquet of love.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

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My father was born on July 10, 1933.  He died in 2010.  He had a group of work colleagues who were also born in July, and they used to call themselves the SRA Cancer Society.  My father did have prostate cancer at one time, but surgery eliminated it completely.  He died of Alzheimer’s.  He was never one to celebrate his birthday in any obvious way, but he did enjoy fine dining.  Fortunately for him, he had the wherewithal to enjoy the very finest.  I benefited from the “trickle down effect” of that boon, meaning that I have dined well on his generosity myself.  On the occasion of his 70th birthday, we stayed at The Benbow Inn near Garberville, CA.  Located on a river in the redwoods, this beautiful resort was established in 1926.  My father counted it as one of his favorite places.  The first time I went there was on the way north to Oregon for my sister’s wedding.  My 9-month old daughter Susan was with me.  Ordinarily, children are not allowed in the dining room after 8pm, but the management made an exception for my father, who promised that the baby would be beautifully behaved…and she was.  Later that evening, I realized she had a bit of a fever and digestive distress, but that only mellowed her out.  The next time I visited the Inn was my father’s 70th birthday.  I had begun to notice signs of memory loss and confusion during that trip, but he was completely in his comfort zone at the restaurant. My mother and brother look a bit skeptical in this photo:

I remember the delight he showed in settling in at the bar and sampling from their extensive selection of Scotch before dinner.  I compare it to my absolute thrill at finding a decanter of sherry in my room.  So nice of them!  The next day, we had them pack us a picnic to eat while out hiking.  It was elegant and tasty, but a far cry from the granola bars and such that my father usually took on his woodland walks.  

I think I set the camera on a tree stump and used the self-timer on this one…

My father would be participating in the heavenly banquet of eternity right now, and I can imagine him enjoying himself immensely in that setting.  I’m off to get myself a little supper, probably just some hummus and a glass of Shiraz, but I eat and drink to his honor in gratitude this evening.  I love you, Dad.  To Life!!

Spacious Skies

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I spent the day in the 19th century, working at Old World Wisconsin, so naturally, I wasn’t allowed to be wandering around with a camera.  I have to admit, though, I did square off my fingers to imagine a few frames.  The sky today was absolutely breathtaking.  Big cumulus clouds with flat, gray bottoms were floating around as if on parade.   Looking up outside St. Peter’s church, with its 1839 bell tower and cross silhouetted against these clouds was like looking at a catalog of “INSPIRATIONAL”.  I remembered back to the days when I was living in Los Angeles County, CA, feeling as if I would suffocate any minute.  To look across the atmosphere to the horizon was like looking into a thick bean soup.  Even looking straight up would remind you of watery hot cocoa.  I longed to escape the valley and take off for clearer skies.  I thought I could simply ascend the mountains and be in a brighter, cleaner, more natural world, but it wasn’t that easy.  Everything is Owned in California.  There is hardly any open land.  We did get an invitation one weekend to house-sit for a retired couple who lived on Mt. Baldy.  Their home was beautiful, furnished with antiques, quiet, nestled away from the highway in the pine trees.  It was good enough.  I took our nine-month old daughter in the baby backpack, my Canon AE-1, and left the smoggy valley behind.  There is a photograph from that weekend etched in my mind.  I’ve got on my beloved hiking boots, Susan is smiling in the pack on my back, my skinny legs are striding over a boulder.  I was in the throes of postpartum depression; I weighed 98 pounds, and I was nursing.  My husband’s buddies called me “Tits on a Stick” behind my back.  I was struggling for survival.

Some years after that, I was living in suburban Illinois, and the skies opened up over the prairie.  I would wander out to open land while the kids were in school and get lost in the clouds.  I remember September 11, 2001, as a clear, sunny, perfect sky day.  I spent the afternoon out in the prairie after having saturated myself in the news that morning.  I look to the sky when I am confused.  Back in the heyday of my Christian spiritual journey, I wrote this poem:

The Sky

 

Did I ever thank you for the sky

spread far around like an open field

piled high with moods and structures,

a playground for my soul?

 

This space above bids my thoughts expand

to climb the heights of an anvil-cloud

and teeter on the edge of a dazzling glare

or slide down the shafts of the sun,

 

To swim to the center of its lonely blue

Where I find no mist to hide me,

and lie exposed to the western wind

like a mountain braced for sunrise.

 

Or clad in the shroud of brooding gray,

it coaxes me to musings

far removed from the minutiae

that chains me to my life.

 

I search for light and openness

to shadow the bonds of earth,

exploring the vault of heaven

for its meaning and its truth.

 

Thanks for this cathedral speaking glory through its art.

Thank you for these eyes admitting You into my heart.

 

Alice Through My Lens

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Blue eyes.  That was one thing that made her unique among 4 sisters.  She had our father’s eyes.   She was the shortest among us; I believe I grew to have at least a half an inch over her.  But that took a while.  Since she was 3 years older, I trailed behind her most of my life.  I definitely didn’t mind following in her footsteps.  I adored her.  She was the sweet sister, the kind one, the one who loved children and animals and had friends.  She somehow spanned the gap between being a nerd and being popular.  Not that she wasn’t picked on early in grade school.  We all were, and she was very sensitive to it.  When she was 10, she ran away from a boy who was chasing her down the sidewalk.  He caught up to her and managed to grab the back of her coat hood. He yanked her down hard, and she fell backwards onto the sidewalk, hitting her head and fracturing her skull.  The boy was sent to military school, and Alice recovered amid cards and gifts and angels surrounding her bed. 

She started dating first among us, though she wasn’t the oldest.  I wanted to learn how this “boyfriend” business worked, so I watched her very closely, sometimes through the living room drapery while she was on the porch kissing her date goodnight.  She modeled how to be affectionate in the midst of a distinctly cerebral family, shy about demonstrating emotion.  She gave me my first pet name: Golden Girl or Goldie, and then the one that stuck in my family, PG or sometimes Peej.  By the time I was 16, we were very close friends as well as sisters.  She invited me to spend Spring Break with her at college, and enjoyed “showing me off”.  She told me that the boys were noticing me and that she’d need to protect me.  I was thrilled!

Alice and Mike in Los Gatos, summer 1979

We spent that summer at home together in California.  I introduced her to my new boyfriend, who eventually became my husband.   She begged our parents to allow me to be her passenger on a road trip back to campus at the end of the summer.  She had just bought a car, and although I couldn’t drive, I could keep her company, sing with her along the way, and be her companion.  The road trip was a travel adventure flavored with freedom, sisterly love, and the sense of confidence and brand new responsibility.  We flopped the first night in a fleabag motel in the same bed.  She woke earlier than I and told me as I roused and stretched how sweet I looked cuddling the stuffed bunny my boyfriend had bought me.  Then we stayed with her friends in Colorado.  Our next day’s journey was to go through the heartland of the country and hopefully, if we made good time, get to Chicago for the night.  We never made it.

Nebraska is flat and boring.  We’d been driving for 6 hours.  I was reclined and dozing when we began to drift off the fast lane, going 80 mph.  Alice over-corrected, and we flipped.  She had disconnected her shoulder strap, and flopped around, hitting her head on pavement through the open window.  Her fragile, gentle head, with two blue eyes.  She was dead by the time we came to rest in the ditch.

Life is an experience, a journey of unexpected and unimagined happening, a verb in motion, not a noun.  Alice was in motion, at 20, and may be even now…somewhere, in some form.  I still taste her sweetness floating near me from time to time. 

Three of four sisters, Christmas 1978

I Promised My Mother-in-law

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I promised to dedicate a post to my mother-in-law for her birthday, which was the 16th.  The last time I saw her alive was on her birthday in the year 2001.  She died sometime the following week, alone in her apartment, while we were traveling.  That fact is consistent with the mystique I associate with remembering her.  I’ll never be certain who she really was, although I have many theories.  I have been told that she was a concert pianist as a young woman and that she played for Rachmaninoff when she was 16.  I have seen the signed program portrait that he gave her.  I did hear her play as an accompanist for our community theater.  She was definitely capable, even with arthritis.  I wish I had known the passion of her younger years.  I saw in her such a mixture of joy and anxiety as a mature woman.  She had a playfulness and sense of humor that I found completely amusing, so much more casual than my own mother’s.  She was a grade school teacher with the ability to relate to people in a very natural way.  She was sentimental about cats and dogs and friendship and children. As I learned more about her relationship with her mother, though, a very painful history emerged, steeped in shame and punishment.   I’m sure that was the root of the depression that lingered throughout her life.  She carried scars and secrets with her to the grave.  We only learned about them when her sister-in-law spoke up after the funeral.  I imagine, though, that she would have liked to allow the sunniest parts of her personality to shine through unclouded.  It was her ability to laugh in the face of fear that I illustrated at her memorial service when I told this story:

In June of 1992, she came out to visit us from California.  We had only been living in Illinois since August, and  Jim had been through an emergency cardiac procedure that January.  She came out eager to see him recovering and to bask in the hugs of her four grandchildren.   He had a scheduled check-up during her stay, and learned that his arteries were even more clogged than in January.  He was advised to undergo double bypass surgery as soon as possible.  He was 31.  She decided to extend her stay indefinitely and see what happened next.  Her anxiety was tremendous, and so was mine.  Her sense of humor, however, surfaced much more readily.  It was her coping strategy, and it matched his perfectly.   The day of the surgery was stormy and dangerous.  A tornado touched down in the vicinity of the hospital and cut out power just as he was coming out of surgery and off the breathing machine.  A frantic nurse grabbed a mouth tube and bag to squeeze air into his lungs.  Marni and I were shaking all over and clutching hands as we watched.  Moments later, the generators kicked in and a calmer air prevailed.  Jim was breathing unassisted, and he was motioning me to come closer to tell me something.   I leaned in to hear him say in a hoarse whisper, “They found out what was wrong with my heart.”  “Yes, dear…”  “When they opened me up, they found this!”  His hand moved under the bedsheets by his side.  I looked down and discovered that he was clutching the broken figure off of one of his bowling trophies.  “The Bowler” was a running gag we had started the first year of our marriage.  He surfaced in Christmas stockings, random drawers, and even in the bouquet of roses Jim brought onstage after my senior voice recital.  How in the world did Jim manage to stage another practical joke on the day of his heart surgery?!!  Well, he had an accomplice, of course.  His mother, who smiled mildly and innocently at the end of the bed while I looked around in utter amazement.  Then we all tried to keep from laughing too hard, only because it was so painful for Jim when he tried to join in.

Recovering from heart surgery, smiles intact.

So, whatever troubles lay at the core of my mother-in-law’s psyche, I appreciate that she had the desire to live happily and tried to do that as much as possible.  She truly loved her children and grandchildren and enjoyed so many pleasures with them.  She shared what joy she found with a lot of kids during her lifetime as a teacher, and I’m sure many are grateful and remember her to this day.

The Kreativ Blogger Award

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I have been nominated for The Kreativ Blogger Award by Naomi Baltuck of Writing Between the Lines. I learned more about her life in her latest post and recognized more places of resonance between us.  Receiving this honor from a published writer and professional storyteller gives me a bit of a thrill, to tell the truth.  Thank you, Naomi!

The rubric of the award suggests that I publish 7 facts about myself and then nominate 7 other bloggers for this award.  I never consider these customs obligatory or binding, so we are all free to do with it what we will.  Think of it as a collection of beads on a string, something to fiddle with if you are so inclined.  Here goes:

1)  My work life as of now includes hours when I am engulfed by a corset, bustle, petticoats, and a prairie bonnet.  I sew pin cushions and crochet rag rugs and play the pump organ.  It also includes time when I sit in my underwear at my grandmother’s cherry table in the dining room, listening to Big Band music from the 30s, bantering with my partner Steve, and cleaning up used books for shipment to new readers.  And at times it includes working one-on-one with an individual who wants to learn more about vocal technique, singing, performing, and discovering the bag of sonic tricks they carry around in their bodies.  I am never going back to work in a cubicle again!

2)  I find looking at the sky a life-changing event. 

3)  I don’t have a TV, a dishwasher, a washer or a dryer anymore.  I also don’t have a mortgage.  Suits me just fine. I do live with approximately 30,000 books.

4)  I haven’t gone to a salon for a haircut for at least 3 years.  I trim off the ends myself every once in a while.  Steve’s hair is almost as long as mine.   A senior visitor to the living history museum where we work asked him brusquely the other day, “When was the last time you got a hair cut?!”  “1882,” he replied. 

5)  I sing along to Broadway musicals while driving 35 miles to work.  I sometimes sing along to Dvorak’s New World Symphony, too, not that there are words to it.  One of my favorite lines from a musical is this:  To love another person is to see the face of God.  For 3 pieces of cheese, tell me what musical that’s from!  (My father used to dole out precious morsels of expensive Camembert or Bleu if we were able to answer Bible questions after dinner, while he was finishing his wine.)

6)  Two of the people I have loved most in my life died right next to me.  My sister Alice died in the driver’s seat while I sat strapped into the passenger’s side.  We were taken by surprise.   That was 3 days before my 17th birthday.  My husband of 24 years died beside me in bed while I lay sleeping.  His kidney dialysis machine and sleep apnea machine made an uninterrupted white noise that covered any disturbance I might have heard, if there was one.  I suppose I have yet to experience a death while fully conscious.  I expect to get a closer look some day, and I want to be able to face it squarely.  

7)  I relish all kinds of hedonistic experiences now with less guilt than I was taught.  I believe Shame is a great thief of holy joy.  Doing nothing but gazing into the faces of the babies I bore was perhaps the beginning of his undoing in my life. 

Whether or not these can be considered facts is debatable.  No matter.  More beads to share:

Stephen G Hipperson takes excellent photographs.  Enjoy!

The Ache to Bloom is a new blog by a young writer of passionate expression.  She’s also one of my children, and I hope she’ll write more.  

These are the only two blogs I have begun to follow since the last time I nominated favorites for an award.  You can see the other 15 here.

Thanks again, Naomi!  And now to the post I promised on June 16…..

  

My Favorite Fathers

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The obvious blog subject of the day here in the U.S. of A. is Father’s Day.  I have two stellar examples of fathers prominent in my thoughts and conspicuously absent in the flesh.  My husband, the father of my four children, died in 2008.  My father, who had 5 children, died in 2010.  What they have in common is that they both felt woefully disappointed by their own fathers (at one time) and were determined to do better.  I’m glad to say that my husband had the chance to improve his relationship with his dad over the years, whereas my father did not.  They both had an internal sense of the kind of father they wanted to be, and were clear in their values.  They were incredibly dependable, stable providers of basic things, although in slightly different mixtures.  My husband was far more of a “warm fuzzy”, emotional Teddy Bear.  My father provided more structure and logic.  I’ve come to realize that these are not opposite qualities in parenting, they are important components.  There are as many ways of concocting a life-giving balance as there are fathers. 

My favorite memories of my dad contain literary and educational aspects: his voice reading aloud from story books, the ballet and opera and museum tickets he treated us to regularly, the vacations and nature walks we went on.   My favorite memories of my husband as a father are visceral and physical: how he held them, laughed with them, cried with them, sang to them, praised them and worried over them.  When a man is giving the best he has to his children, it’s a beautiful thing.  Well worth celebrating, whatever flavor it comes in. 

You gotta give Dad a tie on Father’s Day…

(Okay, photographers, clearly the slides taken by my father’s Leica in the 1970s came out better than the prints from my Canon AE-1 that I scanned into a dusty screen.  My brother-in-law converted the slides to digital images somehow; I love how sharp they are!)

This Space Reserved

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Today’s date is reserved for a blog about my mother-in-law, who was born on this day.  However, I just don’t have time to do Marni justice, since I didn’t get home from work until 6:30, made dinner, walked to the market and am now eagerly anticipating the arrival of my oldest daughter and her First Mate for a sleepover visit and Sunday breakfast, after which I go back to work until 6pm again.  I apologize for the disappointment, but promise to do my best to honor her at a later time.  Here’s a teaser about this beloved person: she was a concert pianist.  She played for Rachmaninoff when she was 16.  Yeah.  And as a grandma, she was a computer game geek.  You’re gonna love her.  

Jim, his mom, and Ach du Wee Bear.