Hurry Up And Wait

Okay, so no photos in here yet, as part of the cataloging process, but I have gone through my fairly sizable collection of paintings to see what I already have, and what is (in my opinion) suitable for showing to the public. Example: Brown-skinned woman in the Temple of Bast painting who still has no nipples - not suitable. Cher with a snake in her hair - suitable. Tree series - suitable. Unfinished and very boring painting of the seaside - unsuitable. First of the Water's Edge series - suitable, I think. And so it goes.

I'm halfway through another of the tree series, which frankly, will make up the bulk of this show (which i'm still waiting to hear back about, but chins up (sigh! that could apply to just me - ugh!) it's going to work out - I have faith) and pondering the possible ways to fill an immense brick wall in a trendy restaurant/bar. Too many small paintings could get lost, but I really don't want to do an entire series of huge paintings, just to fill that wall. The tree series has been a lot of fun - every one is different, even though it's more of a formula than I've used in the past. I think I like working in series - it gives me more comparison/contrast to look at and learn from. The next series will be The Water's Edge, and will be more dreamlike. The title comes from lyrics in Peter Gabriel's song "Red Rain" and has to do with dreams, portents, and a ghost that I am searching for still. I'm still formulating this series; not sure if they might not include mixed media to achieve what I'm looking for.

A Moment's Venting:
On top of these lovely distractions comes the news that my dad has cancer. He's been taking his sweet ambivalent time to tell the rest of the family, which is pretty true to form for him, and I feel sure he's still in the (internally) freaking out stage (pretty sure I would be too). The good news is that the cancer is encapsulated, contained in one area, and the doctors are optimistic he'll make a full recovery, and that's the story I'm sticking to. It is scary to think of though, the physical reality of what was an academic thought - that your parents DO get old, they DO get sick, and eventually, they DO die. You would think at 49 years old, I would have come to terms with the physical reality of this, and I have, kinda. I always thought it would be my mother who got cancer first - I've been preparing for that inevitability for some time, because she isn't in great health, but my dad - he's 78 years old and doesn't look it at all - more like 60 maybe - so it's a shock that he would be the first one to have cancer. It doesn't help to know that his father died of cancer, and that his sister died last year from complications due to esophageal cancer, but I'm trying to remember that his mother lived to be 96, and that he is far more like her than he would care to admit, though maybe not so much now.

Not to worry, dear reader: the basket case of crazy will not be unleashed just yet.

And I will try and get some photos up of stuff that I'm considering for the show in September.

It's four days until Christmas. I have all my shopping done, most of the presents are wrapped, and mountains of cookies have been made and tucked into a myriad of tins. The menus are planned from tonight through Christmas Day with such savory lovelies like roast beef and mushroom risotto, ziti with Italian sausage, fresh caught steamed shrimp, and homemade cheese ball. The house is (more or less) cleaned and ready for celebrating, and ready or not, the season kicks off tonight.

Now I just need to find my holiday spirit. I think I might have lost it - thrown it away in a box of old clothes during the summer, or loaned it to someone who never returned it. The question is, can Santa be Santa without his/her holiday mojo?

By all appearances, it would seem so, but I can tell you this: it's going to be a dark January.

Kinda Eyore-ish

Okay so you're not in my head (and wouldn't a therapist love to scrutinize that!) so you wouldn't know that the reason I haven't been writing is pure depression. I did feel like I was getting kind of hackneyed in the blogosphere, but that was just the tip of the iceberg that I slid off into the arctic sea of Fuckitall.

The kids are both in middle school now, so I have my mornings to myself again, which kind of makes me feel like I'm not pulling my weight, and of course I'm not feeling any inspiration to paint, which adds to that feeling of uselessness, though I have kicked up the home-made goodness as a result, which nobody is complaining about, except maybe my ever-expanding gut.

I find myself still mourning Mrs. Puff, probably because it was so unexpected and horrific, the way she died. I know there was nothing we could have done in the face of an avalanche of hemorrhagic strokes, and maybe that's what haunts me - that sense of complete futility.

I'm having the old recurring issue with living in this part of the world; being a yankee by birth (I have lived in the south for over 40 years, but I'm still a yankee - how about that shit?) and not christian (and I refuse to capitalize such a travesty of a word) is two humongously indelible marks against me in this small, backward-thinking town. Apparently all you have to do for social acceptance is give lip service to being the same religion as everyone else and talk through a mouth full of marbles. I kid you not. It doesn't matter if you're committing adultery, are an abusive parent or abusive spouse, or a dead-beat parent who leaves their kids to fend for themselves - if you profess your faith loudly enough, no one will care what you do behind closed doors (and these aren't stereotypes; every example I listed is someone I know, in all their sanctimonious hypocrisy, who treats me and my family like lepers). Being a kind and decent human being doesn't count for doodly without that "got jesus" lobotomized seal of approval. (Please note: I have nothing against Jesus himself, or what he had to say. My problem is with the trash that insists on using his name to legitimize their petty fear and hatred of anything that doesn't fit into their limited awareness.) I know there are people who are truly good christians - I know 2 personally, but there are so many of the other kind. Aren't they calling themselves the "Tea Party" these days?

So, on top of those delectable tidbits from the fantastic pile of shit that is permeating my existence on a daily basis, I have a trip to make, starting tomorrow. I'm headed up to Buffalo, with my dad. He's going to see his sister and an old friend, both of whom are in very frail health. He hates death, is even kind of phobic about it, so this isn't going to be a pleasure jaunt. I'm a little amazed that he's even going. I have to confess, I'm not sure I'm up to this myself, treading water in my own murky sea of personal bullshit, but I said I'd go. I'm going to take a composition book and try to do some journalling - angst is good for writing, right? I'm also going to try and carpe diem; to take it one day at a time and try, TRY to find some good in there amongst the craptastic chaff.

And at the least there will be apples - lovely crisp New York apples and cider to look forward to, right?

Demise

After watching and waiting for some sort of improvement for most of last week, the inevitable has occurred. Puffin Anne, aka Mrs. Puff, has passed into the shadows and drawn a pall over the hearts of those who loved her. Rest in peace, sweet Puff.

And Now We Wait

I saw Puff lying in the grass yesterday, when I came out of the house to go to the gym. Something about the way she was lying there, curled up next to the driveway, made me stop and take a look. She had a lot of debris in her fur, which granted, it is springtime and there is a lot of pollen on the ground, but it seemed like more than usual. I rolled her over to look at her face, and stroke her belly, check for anything unusual. She wasn't real responsive, but I might have just awakened her from a nap. I left her to her slumber and went to the gym.

When I got back from the gym, she wasn't lying by the driveway anymore, and I went inside to phone my husband before I had to go pick up the middle school kids. I looked out the front door, and saw her lying in the street. Garbling something to my husband, I slammed down the phone and ran out to get Puff, expecting her to be already dead. To my surprise, she was alive, but strangely not wanting to move.

I scooped her up in my arms, and ran to the house, where I laid her gently on the rug inside the door and ran to call the local vet. While I was on the phone she got up and half-limped through the kitchen and down the hall, seemingly searching, but for what I didn't know.

I took her to the vet, and the technicians examined her while we waited for the doctor to arrive (and why there was no doctor there at 2:30 pm on a Tuesday, I have no idea - there was only one other client there as well). The one technician discovered that Puff's eyes were not dilating evenly, and her left back leg seemed to be partially paralyzed. The vet arrived and gave her a once over as well, before deciding to do a few x-rays. With her permission, I ran home to check on the kids, who had come home with a neighbor while I was gone.

They did 3 x-rays of her body, and found no significant damage anywhere; no broken bones, no wounds or lacerations, just a little bruising near the back left leg, and a little near her lungs. They gave her steroids to reduce the swelling, and an IV drip to keep her hydrated. An enlarged spleen and kidney showed up on the x-ray, which in turn led to a blood test to screen for any underlying deficiencies, or metabolic issues. It came back completely normal. Meanwhile Puff was anything but normal; she was circling to her left continually, and her eyes appeared fixed and dilated still.

The general concensus is that Puff suffered some sort of trauma to the head, or possibly and more rarely, a stroke. I'm leaning towards the trauma diagnosis, though for the life of me, I can't imagine what happened to her. I mean, wouldn't a car have done more damage? She stayed at the vet overnight, and I brought her home today, but she is by no means out of the woods.

It is now up to me to make sure she gets fluids sub-cutaneously twice a day, and to try and feed her by syringe as much as I can, to try and keep her organs functioning as normally as possible while hopefully, she recovers. She also has no control of her bodily functions, so I'll need to clean her several times a day, when she evacuates or urinates.

I don't want to give up on her, but I also know that she might not come back from this. The vet and I agreed that I would try to keep her going for the next week, and see if she made any neurological progress in that time. It's a quality of life issue here: if she can't walk or feed herself, or use the litterbox, I have to make the call, and let her go. It's breaking my heart to see her like this, my beautiful, sassy, flower-catching Puff, just lying there, her eyes vacant and unseeing, her left side too weak to support her. We just lost Willow a few weeks back, to renal failure, and it's only been a year since Jasper and Squeak both died. I feel full up and unable to deal with death right now, but there really is no choice, other than the one I've made.

Please, send a little healing karma her way, won't you? We all love her so much.

Neurotic Fears and Growing Pains

It's been an interesting week.

Last week, my mother had a mild heart attack. This week, today in fact, she went into the hospital for a catharization (Sp?) diagnostic and they found an area in her heart that had 80% blockage. They're putting a stent (and the Blogger software is again having issues with my spelling!) in and she should be feeling pert in no time, but wow...

It would seem the halcyon days of my parents' good health are shifting into what is inevitable with aging, but hard to accept, which I believe is also par for the course (and I really hate it when I can't think of a better phrase than a golf-related one, for crying out loud). I've always told my dad (who's older than my mom by 6 years, I think) that he is way too much of an asshole to ever die young. Sheer ornery stubbornness will keep him going into his late 90s, barring any freak accidents with fence posts, shot guns, or wild animals - just to list a few possibilities in his skill range right now. But my mother, that's another story.

I have this horrible fear that she has given up on living - I know, that sounds terrible doesn't it? Maybe not so much as give up on life, and not giving a damn about confronting her mortality and trying to boost her odds with maybe giving up or reducing her cigarette habit, and getting regular exercise. It scares me, the idea of having a heart attack. I imagine it to be a claustrophobic squeezing of your chest; your heart sputters, your lungs close up, and you drown in a sea of stagnant blood. Sorry to be graphic, but nightmares often are.

What is worse than imagining my own heart attack, is to contemplate my life without my mother in it. It's not like I talk to her every day, or have Sunday dinner there every week, but I do rely on her, not only for advice on sick kids, or what's missing from that recipe she gave me last week, but you know, to be there. The last little piece of my childhood is still intact, that from-birth sense of continuity that all is as it should be, as long as my mother is in the world. I know I can't have it that forever, all things yield to Time's erosion, but maybe just a little longer, please?

Alas Poor Chubby

October 1990 - March 8, 2009

Jasper Louise, aka Chubby Ann, died this past Sunday evening, after a rapid decline in health this past week. She was never the prettiest or the most lovable cat, but she was loved nonetheless, for her quirky sense of humor and her assertive personality. She was buried in the front yard, in a private twilight service, and laid to rest with a peanut donut between her paws, and a Japanese maple overhead.

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It's just been one of those weeks, you guys. I'm sure you know the kind: dying animals underfoot, requiring round the clock attention; children on a bad brat kick, because you're not paying attention to them (grrr); I've caught Bea's cold, or something like that, and to top off the fun here at the Edge, my left eye is all red and swollen up. Pink eye? Pollen? Excessive crying messing up the tear ducts? Who the hell knows.

Plans for Bea's Not My Birthday Party/Vernal Equinox Celebration are moving ahead. If you're going to be in the RDU area on March 21st, and want to come, let me know. The more the merrier! After Ms. Q's visit this past weekend, with a rainbow of Izze fruit sodas in hand, we've decided that Izzes might be the perfect mixer with vodka for the big day.

Apologies all around from me: I've been a bad blog friend this past week, what with all the hoopla going on. Forgive me, I will be trying to catch up this week.

Bea, the girl who used to blog, is armpit deep in beaus right now. I know - she's all bemused by this turn of events as well! I keep telling her that she should spill the dirt with all of us, via writing a post (hint, hint, Bea!), but she's keeping her cards close to her much sought after chest these days. Tell her you want to know all the dirt, won't you?

Hindsight Doesn't Amount to a Hill of Beans

They were the only litter of kittens we've ever had (well, their mother had them, but you know what I mean). I was there at their birth and loved them like they were my own children. I couldn't bear to part with any of them, so we kept them all and doubled the number of cats in this house.Yesterday I walked down to Bea's house to retrieve a ham from her refrigerator. One of the boys, Squeak (the one on the right, above), started to follow me down the street, miaowing. I stopped, turned around and scolded him: "Dammit Squeak! Get out of the street before you get hit by a car!" His mother, Feather, ran across the street and herded him to the side of the road, and I continued on towards Bea's house. I got the ham, stopped to scratch Zoe's head (she once was a cat in my temple to Bast, and I'm very fond of her), and headed back home.

From the street up at Bea's I could see there was something in the road, but I couldn't remember if there had been a pile of pinestraw there or not. As I got closer, I saw Feather standing at the side of the street, miaowing, and the heap in the street became the body of Squeak as I drew closer.

The wash of grief and guilt almost drowned me there in the street as I picked up his beautiful little body, hoping against hope for a breath of life, but he had left us all. It had taken me less than than 5 minutes to go to Bea's and back, and that was all the time it took for him to leave us.

Beautiful like a Maine Coon, sweet tempered and loving, Squeak had been one of our favorites. For the Professor, he was the only cat in the world.I went to school early and got the boys. We had family coming over later and the boys needed time to process what had happened. We buried him in the garden, near the catnip bush, so he could always be near us in a place he loved.And life goes on. In spite of our disbelief, in spite of our dwindling, irrational hope that he would be there to greet us this morning, he wasn't, and life, seemingly roughshod, continues on.

Brief Candle

She was smaller than I remembered, shrunken in upon herself. Her hair, which had always been neatly coiffed was cropped short and a little tousled. It had only been two years since I had seen her but it was as if she had aged twenty years in that time. It was that rapid aging, I think, that slapped me the hardest with the obvious truth. It's one thing to know intellectually of someones illness, it's quite another to witness it firsthand. My aunt is dying. She's dying and there's nothing to be done but watch. Nothing to do but wait and make small talk. Nothing and that's the hardest part to wrap my head around, because I'm a do-er, a fighter. It's excruciating, the passive waiting, the watching, but it's not my call how this ends. I am "but a poor player that struts and frets", and I only have a walk-on part in this particular tragedy.

She could only handle short visits, so the hubman and I left to let her take a nap before dinner. We headed to the woods near where I had lived, a park called Chestnut Ridge. My mother's parents had their ashes scattered there, so in a sense, I was visiting my grandparents, but also like them, I find solace and refuge more readily in nature than in a church. I went there to cry, to have it out with myself before I had to appear again at dinner time, with an outwardly happy appearance. I thought a lot about the past; of the years we did live closer, of the family rift that seems to only deepen with time, of our imminent mortality and what we leave behind, each of us, as a legacy to those we loved.

Did I have an epiphany and go back to shed the light of my enlightenment upon those less fortunate? God, no. What light does anyone really want shed upon their personal time of grief? I walked under the ancient and gnarled apple trees in the park, collecting their freshly fallen offering. I cried as the grief came to me in waves and leaned on the strong shoulder of my beloved. I took strength from nature's cyclical immortality, and knew the blessing it is just to be alive. I gathered myself enough to go back calm and serene, and to not cast the burden of my grief upon already weighted shoulders.

There was a moment when we parted that evening; I held her face in my hands. I smiled at her with all the love I could not articulate. We embraced for a long moment, and said goodbye.

Fly On A Very Strange Wall

Bea has the Psych degree - I have no formal education in the field, but I grew up in the household of a man who went from being a steelworker going to night school, at my birth, to a PhD in Psychology when I was about 12. I think it's a little bit more than just staying at a Holiday Inn Express, in terms of what you pick up, both in terminology and concept, as well as exposure to illustrative circumstances.

Which in plain English means as the kids of a shrink-in-training we were exposed to an underbelly of life other kids never saw, much less even thought of. My dad would take us with him on weekends, to Dorothea Dix Hospital while he saw patients. We didn't actually go inside the hospital, and frankly, I'm grateful - hospitals of all kinds are bad mojo, in my opinion - but we hung out on the grounds with the less dangerous patients. Comforting thought indeed, to a 9 or 10 year old, that these people, often aimlessly milling about, sometimes talking to themselves, were the less dangerous ones.

Once, my younger brother brought a Hot Wheels with him and was running it up and down one of those large, sort of pagoda-roofed trash cans. My older brother and I watched him idly, bored, killing time. An ancient looking old man kind of tottered over to us, stood near us, fascinated with the movement of the little red car. Up and down, up and down the trashcan my brother ran it, somewhat nervously looking at the rapt old man watching his every move. Abruptly, the old man reached out and took the car from my brother. We all stood slightly back, and a little closer together, as we watched him run the little Hot Wheels up and down. Up and down, up and down. My dad called to us just then, from the top of the steps, up at the front of the hospital, and we went to him. We left the car behind with the old man, figuring, as my younger brother said later, "He needed it more than we did."

As benign as that encounter was, it was disturbing to us. We knew something wasn't right, but we were clueless as to what that was. And for every benign, albeit strange encounter, there were others with darker undercurrents. I remember a woman stopping our car as we drove through the hospital grounds one summer evening. She leaned on the side of the car to talk to my dad, her arms prominent in my view from the backseat. They were covered with freshly healing wounds; slashes, gashes and holes crowded her arms from wrist to elbow, and I stared at them in horrified fascination. When I asked later about the scars and wounds my father's answer wasn't explicit, which is probably as it should be, but I still wondered about that woman and what had happened to her.

It made me look at the people on the street differently, wondering how many of these seemingly normal, well adjusted people who smiled as they passed were in actuality fragile and hanging by tenuous, invisible threads. It made me aware that the creepy man in the trenchcoat at the park wasn't there for the ballgame, and that every bum passed out in the bushes by the capital building, reeking of cheap wine and urine, had been someone's child once.

Perhaps that's where empathy is born - in that startling flash of clarity when you see someone who is ill, or hurting, or subversive - and you realize that you could just as easily be that person, as they could be you, given a different set of circumstances.

"Life on the streets, it isn't that bad
or all that it's cracked up to be.
Some are half crazy, others plain stupid,
some they just want to be free..."
Peter Case

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It's been a rough couple of weeks. The trip to New York was - difficult - I'm still processing it. I've been sick as a dog twice in that time as well, went to an epic birthday party at Cleo's where the Captain did me in, and life goes on, regardless of whether you're strapped in and ready for the roller coaster ride.

Meet My Hamster (aka, The Long Downward Spiral And It's Wherefore)

Other than to tell you about his predilection for shrieking "Galaxy Quest" quotes, I've never really introduced my little hamster, have I?

How remiss of me!

As you may have surmised by now, yes I have a tiny little furry rodent who lives in my brain and keeps me up at night. More often than not, it's after I've had the evening cup of coffee, or pounded a Coke Icee at the movies, but even without Demon Caffeine to poke the hamster, he's a bit of a night owl. He's the one who has to hash and re-hash, over and over all those skeletons banging about in my mental closet, muttering commentary in my ear on things that cannot be changed.

It's really annoying, and usually, just a sign I need to stop drinking coffee at night, or (eek) deal with the real stress factors, because let's face it - my ruined love life in 5th grade really isn't the problem in the here and now - it's just a well worn groove of "Should-a Could-a Would-a"** that's easier to traverse than the actual crap keeping me up at night. I think, I worry - it's what I do.

But lately,I'm overwhelmed by a darkness that sends my little hamster into hiding. This darkness follows me, blocking my view of the ever-hopeful sun, wringing out my joy by the gut-twist-fuls. I know it's name, I know I have no power over it, and that, I think, is what pushes me to the edge.

Four states away my aunt is dying of esophageal cancer. A year after her surgery, the cancer is back, and there is very little that can be done for her, hovering at a near-skeletal 80 pounds. They can't do chemotherapy, because she's too weak, and she can't seem to gain weight or strength.

I wanted to go and see her while I was up in Pennsylvania this past June, not knowing just how bad off she was, but my father pooh-poohed the idea and we didn't go. Now I'm kicking myself for listening to Mr. Ambivalent, and wondering if I'll ever get to see her once more, if only to say goodbye. I'm afraid of being a selfish jerk, wanting to hover at her bedside just to net myself some closure. I wonder - do the dying really want us to come and cry at their bedside? Does that help them? It seems sort of gruesome, to mourn someone's death before they've even passed on. I'm not sure what consolation I can offer my cousins - life hasn't exactly handed them a fair deal (genetic bullshit with a name I can never remember, but it boils down to them all having ticking time bombs in their heads, and its a gift that keeps on giving, from one generation to the next.) and now they have to lose their mother, their rock? It isn't fair and there's no "moving in mysterious ways" that's going to make it any more reasonable.

To further complicate the scenario,the two families are not particularly close, the causes being schismatic differences in religion, lifestyle, geographic location, and let's not forget the ever present legacy of my grandmother - ambivalence. But I love my aunt, and I enjoy her company, whether we believe in the same dogma or not. I see pieces of myself in her, albeit arranged differently, and I will feel an emptiness in my life when she's not there anymore.

You can see why my hamster is in hiding, can't you?
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Later~
I made a decision, after talking to my dearest husband and my beloved Bea, and making a few phone calls. I'm taking the trip to go see my aunt, to spend a little time with her, and my cousins. I need to have that chance as my sage friend Ms. Q so eloquently put it, to say, "You have made a difference in my life, and I love you'". To spend a little time together, so I can maybe let go a little more gracefully when I must.

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And the hamster begins his laps again, on the squeaky, creaky wheel in my head...

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** a Peter Case song - I love that NY boy!

Bitter Reflux (aka Bad Poetry)

She had hair that flew
when the top was down,
and reflected the light in her eyes-
built for fun, built for love,
she was ripe with the promise of life.

He was an artist,
a dreamer, (a prick)
a selfish myopic, eyes fixed on himself-
he used the word love like bait.

The chemistry of that time is gone,
only strands of memory drift down-
they loved - she lost
both him and their child,
and the meaning of things in her heart.

Mammaries, Like The corners of My Boobs

I'm sorry - that was a completely miseading title, wasn't it? I'm a firm believer in paraphrasing sappy ass songs, and that is one of my personal bests. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to sing the rest of it to you - it's somewhat blue (somewhat - ahahahahaha!), and I was actually going somewhere else with this post.

Ahem...!

It's hard to believe how fast time goes by. It was only last week, it seems, that I was holding my first born, freaking out over the immense responsibility I had taken on. And now, in the blink of an eye or two, it's 11 years later, and my little Professor is on his way to teendom. What the hell happened? I haven't gotten any older, how did he? At any rate, he's still one of my very favorite people in the whole wide world, and not just because he lets me ramble on and on about the English Reformation and the Birth of Piracy in the New World ("I could just listen to you talk forever, Mom") What a delightful suck-up!

Happy Birthday Professor! (singing, "and many moooore!")

Muddy Waters

The phone call came today, from my friend whose mother died. I was afraid she would be brittle and unyielding in her coping; impossibly imprisoned in her fairy tale tower of protection, but grief had levelled her. On the phone, she sounded like the girl I knew so long ago, her older, more interior self. As we talked a million memories, some muddy and indistinct, others crystalline, bobbed to the surface of the silty depths of my mind.

Reaching for those memories down in the sludgy bottom of my consciousness, I hesitated. My fear of what might be lingering, lurking there in the sediment, forgotten, kept me from trawling through that dormant, long buried past. For now.

I think it's time to drain the pool, and clean out the debris.

We are getting together on Saturday to visit with each other, to reconnect. In part, to pay my respects, but also to grieve together, something I'm surprised to discover I need to do.

As much as I have vilified her mother, painted her as a narcissistic monster of selfishness (and she was), as an adult I recognize her impact on my life. I realize that my memories are colored in crayon, the memories of a child, and there were undoubtedly undercurrents and dynamics I was ignorant of that played into the scenes I witnessed. I owe it to myself and my friend to steel my nerve and dig into that past, if only to affirm our bond to each other as situational siblings, but maybe also to make some sense of the things that haunt us both.

Summertime

It's mid-August and summer is passing before my lazy eyes. The flower beds have been beaten down by heat and Japanese beetles, and all that remains to delight the eye are the rogue flowers of the climbing weeds, like cow itch or morning glories. They creep into the beds and up the trees, hide under the bee balm and Gerber daisies, waiting for their moment to emerge. It's almost like they know; I haven't the heart to destroy anything that blooms in late summer. I haven't the heart for many things right now. With the passing season comes the reality that I have to do something about Jasper. Right now, and for a few months more, it'll be warm enough for her to live comfortably outdoors, but come late October, maybe November if it stays warm, I have to say goodbye and ease this old cat out of life. She's the last of the cats from our college years, and the end of an era, and in spite of her random piddling ways, I love her and will miss her. With her goes that last tangible thread that led to my youth, my life before this one.

Ever onward and upward, still, it's hard not to look behind as you leave a chapter forever. The kids are gone this week, up to visit with my sister. The silence is wonderful, and soul refreshing, but I miss the nectar of their sweet laughter and warm hugs.
My garden, seemingly empty and bereft, in spite of being overgrown, but hidden green peppers burgeon and ripen in anticipation of the boys' return. And ripe tomatoes make BLTs sublime. On Friday, August 15, I will be guest posting over at A Work of Art for Bennie Waddell, who's on vacation. Come check it out!

Exploratory Soul Surgery

The elderly mother of a childhood friend died over the weekend, and I went to the reception/wake that was held for her. I hadn't spoken with my friend for a couple of years, partly because she moved out to Arizona, and partly because when she did come home to visit she always wanted to reconnect with 20-30 friends at the same time, in a celebrity/paparazzi kind of gathering, which, in my opinion, isn't really about reconnecting with any of those people - it's about stroking an ego and feeding an exhibitionist's jones for attention. Maybe I'm just inflexible, but I just can't stoke that bonfire of vanity.

Walking into that house took me back to 10 years old. I instinctively looked to see if there was still a curtain by the entrance to the screened porch to hide behind. The energy of her life, the deceased, was still palpable in every room, or maybe it was just my vivid memories. I stood testament to so much in that house. A stream of folks wandered in and out of the reception. I recognized some, but others were too transformed by time for me to easily recognize them. The big elephant in the house that day was the absence of my friend, at her mother's memorial. Her older sister made excuses for her absence, explaining she had to attend a yoga workshop out west, but her rolling eyes added an editorial I understood too well.

The story, the dynamics that set this scene in motion, go much deeper than a simple power struggle. Despite having several sisters, my friend was, in many ways, an only child. She was a post-40 Whoops child, and her sisters were all but grown up and out of the house when she came along, so she enjoyed and suffered the full brunt of her mother's attention and neglect. Her mother was a very bright woman, both academically and artistically, but she was also extremely competitive and often angry at the world around her. Her marriage broke up when my friend was about 3 or 4 and she never remarried, choosing to live and raise her youngest daughter alone.

I don't think I can effectively summarize the myriad stories of my childhood that played out at their house, that are part and parcel of my friend's no-show. Some are good stories. Little girls playing dress up with a box of antique petticoats, riding side saddle on almost as antique Schwinn bicycles, transformed by imagination into glorious steeds. Dazzling late night parties peopled by local celebrities and politicians, where we were introduced as a pair of precocious princesses, and oh, how we loved to play the part! I enjoyed a rarified upbringing in that house, exposed to books, art, theatre, politics, and the then burgeoning feminist movement, and I owe all of that to my friend's mother. But there are darker stories of her influence as well.

Some are downright nightmares; cataclysmic storms of misplaced rage, apathetic neglect of both her child and her home. In my mind images of spacious rooms with elegant furnishings; a baby grand piano in a room full of windows, antique portraits of ancestors hung above family heirlooms, are juxtaposed against images of a refrigerator full of spoiled food, a basement crawling with almost sentient mold, and a woman whose variable moods and deadly temper made me grateful for my own batshit crazy parents, and the fact I could go home at 5 o'clock. We were never quite sure what would tip her off; a dirty towel on the floor, a broken ashtray, but we knew, once she got going it wasn't going to end until someone was shredded and in tears.

My friend told me once about a bad experience she had while partying - that she had all these really traumatic images of her mother and her grandmother boil up and she couldn't tell where it had come from. She thought it had all been a product of her inebriation, but as she described the images to me, I was horrified. They weren't fabrications, they were suppressed memories of her childhood. I knew what they were because I had been present for many of them, and it is not my luck in life that I can forget, though I wished I had, so I could have feigned ignorance for her sake.

I can't say with authority why my friend wasn't there at that memorial/wake/reception. All I can tell you is what I know of what came before, and even then, I feel like there is a ghost who wants to shut my mouth.

On The Edge of Reason

It sounded like a good idea at the time:

With school out I haven't had any real need to have a car every day, and since the hub-man is still driving the Grandma-mobile (a 1987 Chrysler with only 50,000 miles on it - oh, and no AC.), it made sense to let him have my beloved Toyota Corolla ("Take you there, it will - cost you much, it won't" - Yoda). We could save on filling up two tanks with gas and he could ride in air conditioned comfort during the dog days of summer. We want to buy a new car, but where was the sense in making car payments all summer when we didn't have to? Oh yeah, we're some farty-smarties, being all frugal.

Reality Check:
I have two of the best behaved kids in the world - no really, they're good guys. They are kids though, so some days they bank off of the walls; some days they're evil as snakes, and fight with each other. Putting them to work calms them down like magic, and banning them from playing together for the rest of the day invariably makes it irresistable for them stay away from each other for long. They're easy, more or less - it's the fractious, antsy, twitchy mom I'm having problems with.

I feel like I'm trapped at home, drowning under an ocean of dirty clothes and monotony. While it's great to be able to stay up and sleep in, I miss my quiet time in the morning, after the guys are at school. I could think. There wasn't any chirping, "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom,Mom..." ad nauseum. It hasn't helped that the hub-man has had to work longer hours lately, on a fairly important project at work, so there's no grown up besides me until 8 or 9 some nights. And when he's tired, he's not much better than a grumpy toddler, really. So yeah, I'm jonesing for some grown ups. Did I mention that Bea is leaving me next week? Psychotic break-time, anyone?

My oldest cat, Jasper, is on her last leg these days. She's become so incontinent we've had to keep her outside, the guilt of which impels me to feed her three times a day and change her water, replete with ice cubes. I also set up a bed for her arthritic old bones to lie upon, but come fall, if she hasn't just turned up her toes, I'm going to have to do the deed and gas her. This, of course, isn't much of a mood booster.

Just like the sun, when it goes behind a cloud, I know things will clear up, all will be resolved, and I will be back to my usual self. It's just in the meantime, "I'm looking down, Shrek!"

Home is where your heart is

My grandfather, his sister and their parents

In another week or so we head north for our yearly vacation in the mountains of western Pennsylvania - Oil City, namely - my father's hometown. Its not exactly a place that tons of people flock to for family vacation time, and frankly, I consider that a perk. I'm not much for crowds - they make me surly.

When I was a child and we lived outside of Buffalo, our trips down to Oil City were frequent. My great grandfather was still alive then, living with my great aunt and her family in the house they had lived in since 1905. My grandfather was born in that house, and my father grew up there as well. It was the quintessential Grandma's House kind of place to go visit, even though none of my grandparents actually lived there. Or maybe that was why.

The house in question (pay no attention to the dapper fellow in the foreground)

We moved to Raleigh in 1969 and the following year my great grandfather died.

I think we went to Oil City once more after that, on a trip up to Buffalo to visit family. My great aunt had also passed away by then and the family had sold the old house to consolidate funds and provide my great uncle with medical care for his emphysema. That was around 1972 and we never went back again. I do recall us going to see the old house, and the new owners allowed us to come in for a last look around. I never see love beads that I don't think of my great aunt's living room during that visit. It was a punch to the emotional gut to see the changes the new owners had wrought, and from then on, my memories were all I had.

In 2000 the hub-man and I took a trip up north to visit family and on the way back we stopped off in Oil City to do a little family research. We located a cemetery that first trip where my Great-great-great grandparents were buried and decided it was worth the extra time to go check it out.

I stood in that cemetery, on a hilltop outside of a little town called Rouseville, watching a thunderstorm roll in over the surrounding hills, and for the first time since we had moved away from Buffalo, I felt like I had come home. Not to be all New Age freaky, but cemeteries all have different vibes to me. Most of the time they feel like you've just walked into someone else's house, but there on that hill, I could almost smell the old house that only lived in my dreams, and felt my family all around me. There on that hill I cried, for the joy of having found them, and for the frustration that they were still so far away.

I went back the following year, and the year after that, staying a night or two in the local hotel, always feeling a bit out of synch with the area. In 2004 I found a house to rent and my parents came with us that year. We all fell in love with that old house, partly, I believe, because it was similar to my great grandparents' house. It was also on the grounds of a park where my dad had played as a kid, so the proximity to his old stomping grounds was another factor. The other added bonus of having a big house to stay in was being able to host my aunt and some of her family, who drove down from Buffalo. It had been over 30 years for me since I had been back there, but it had been even longer since my aunt and my father had been there together. The stories that poured out of them as we went around town were invaluable to the research I was conducting, and highly illuminating, since I wasn't around when a lot of them happened.

Home away from home

Creek at Miller Farm in Oil Creek State Park

Single file at Petroleum Centre

The stories we tell on a trip like this are the best reason to go. The tales of ancestors scraping a life out of this place, of their devotion to and reliance on each other. These stories, told by my father to his grandchildren are priceless jewels in the crown of their identity. They are moments that can only occur for a limited time, but their potential to be remembered and passed down grants immortality to so many.

"No time to 'splain, let me sum up"

Hello, remember me?

Are you tired of reading the archives just yet? (there will be a pop quiz, later, btw)

Are you maybe wondering what the hell happened to the Tapdancer, that she hasn't been posting for almost a week?

Life, my friend - life has a way of being messy and needing a bit of a cleanup, from time to time.

Let's see, where did I leave off? Ah yes,...the field trip. The professor came home safe and sound, albeit an hour late, so I have no fingernails left - that last hour was the worst! He had a great time and I'm much , much better now. Thank you to everyone for being so lovely and supportive of my crazy uber mom tendencies.

There's been a lot going on this past weekend and into this week, besides my not-so-quiet jangling mother nerves. Ms. Q had to take some time off from work because she has killed her right hand with tendonitis. Seriously, the poor girl is basically one-handed right now, and taking meds to keep the pain at bay. The fun part of this is that she is a WILD woman when she's doped up on pain killers. Besides the oddities she bought from a late-night (nudge, nudge) home shopping channel (and I'm forbidden to tell you just what kind of oddities - I was forced to swear on it, dammit!), she also started a blog while under the influence of said painkillers. There's just the one, drug-induced post right now, but maybe, if we all go over and leave encouragement, she'll spill her guts about her recent shopping spree (oh Puhleeze, Ms. Q - it was such a good story!!!). You can find her here. This is Ms. Q regaling us with her late night shopping exploits:

Bea and I had to head down to the coast on Tuesday, to get our newest feline, Simon, neutered and all his shots. I took a couple of others for rabies, etc. boosters and Bea took her little Siamese daughter, Bella for her yearly checkup.

Why would we drive almost 3 hours to the coast to see a veterinarian, instead of going to a local vet? Two very big reasons: money and competence.

The cost of a vet visit in the greater Raleigh area is akin to going to see a human doctor, and I'm going to say it for the world to hear - every vet we have seen locally is incompetent when it comes to diagnostics. They never seem able to figure out what's wrong with an animal unless they perform every test in the book, and even then, they pussyfoot around. I'm not talking about one cat, one time, one doctor; I'm talking every time we see a local vet the bill is sky-high and the care is low quality. I had to insist that the vet not do an x-ray or wire Rikki's mouth shut, when he fractured his jaw, and you know what? He mended perfectly. When Jezebel got a bacterial infection of the intestinal tract, the vet insisted we do 3 x-rays and a barium enema (450.00) before she would finally put the poor thing on antibiotics. When Jasper had an obvious tumor in her throat; a tumor so big she couldn't eat, the local vet said, "Wow, that's a real honker!" and did nothing else for her, for an entire month, while my cat slowly wasted away before my eyes.

Down near Atlantic Beach, there is a veterinarian we know, who has been in practice for over 30 years. He works with one technician, on a shoestring, and he is the best damn doctor I have ever met. He's saved so many animals from death's door for us that I'm often tempted to see if he'll do my checkup as well, opening the door, of course, for many lewd and coarse jokes, which is just icing on the cake of how much I love Doc!So we took a portion of the furry herd down on Tuesday to see our favorite man in green scrubs, and then we headed over to the diner for a bit of lunch. I love this old place - its been down at "The Circle" at Atlantic Beach since the 1930s, so its not shiny, but it does have character. And the gyro was pretty damn good, as were the hush puppies - mmm, hush puppies!
We yutzed around the coast for a few hours, thought about going to the Aquarium, but as it was rife with schoolkids on a field trip (shudder), we just drove around for awhile and then headed back to Doc's to get the "kids".
Everyone got a clean bill of health, except poor Bella, who had a bit of a nasty surprise hiding in her mouth. Bea is going to be writing about this soon, so I'm not going to elaborate, but suffice to say, we were both a bit weepy on the ride home.

I have cookie making duties for my classes this week, so I won't be around a whole lot, but JOY of JOYs! The guys are going to Richmond this weekend, so Mommy is going to get that weekend of sweet silence after all. Yay Daddy!!!

Requiem

We have a little natural stream that runs through our yard, and ever since we have lived here, I have been the troll under the bridge, harassing the neighbor kids who come to fish in it. It's not that I don't want them to play in the stream; I would be fine with that, if that was all there was to it, but the nature of little boys and creeks I know firsthand from my own brothers. They start out playing and then discover the aquatic life, and rarely are they cut from the cloth of naturalists; they invariably want to catch and imprison the poor little crayfish and salamanders. I watched scores of turtles, crayfish, and salamanders die in buckets, thanks to my brothers.

So with this stream, or at least, my own little part of this stream, I have been vigilant in protecting the little creatures who make up its delicate little ecosystem. This past summer we had so many different kinds of snakes, and toads, crayfish, and salamanders living in it, and my boys, having been schooled in proper ettiquette of playing in Mommy's Creek, loved playing in it for hours at a time.

Yesterday the boys stayed home from school, mostly because of stuffed up heads, so they went out to play in the creek. A little while later, they came in and told me that they had found several dead salamanders and crayfish, and that the water was cloudy, and a bit bubbly. I went out to look for myself and was shocked. I found at least two dozen little red salamanders dead in our section of the creek, and almost as many little crayfish. The water wasn't particularly cloudy at this point, but it might have been when they were down in it earlier.

We got out and headed around the block, to another section of the same creek, to ascertain the extent of the damage. It was the same story the whole way down; more little salamanders, and more crayfish, dead, and not a fish to be seen. What was going on? I wondered. It had just rained the night before, so why all the little dead animals? I wondered if someone had drained something toxic into the water upstream.

It wouldn't be the first time. The last time I had found gasoline in the water, I called the local EPA people, who came out and basically told they could do nothing, without concrete evidence that pointed to a specific individual. Nice to see my tax dollars at work, promoting apathy.

When we got back home, we took one more look in our creek to see if there were any creatures who had survived. We found one huge old crayfish, about half the size of a lobster, who was still trying to hang on. We took him in the house and set him up in a big bowl of freshwater aquarium water and gravel, hoping the cleaner water might revive him. The Bohemian named him "Cray" and was quite upset about the mass carnage, but was holding it together for Cray's sake.

Today, after school we came home and checked on Cray, who, sadly, did not manage to revive from whatever it was that poisoned him. When my husband got home, we buried Cray in a little grave in the backyard (dug by my little Bohemian, replete with headstone), and said a few words. Then my youngest son and I hugged each other and cried; for Cray, and for all of the little salamanders and crayfish whose lives were swept away by stupid, thoughtless people. An entire little ecosystem, destroyed by people who never even considered they might be there, much less, might be crucial to the health of our little corner of this world.

There are no happy thoughts to end this with - people are THE scourge and plague of this beautiful planet. I read that the majority of amphibians,having lived on earth for 350 million years, are rapidly disappearing, thanks to people, and their insistence on developing every square inch of the planet, leaving nothing for any other species to inhabit.

If this upsets you, think about what you put on your lawn to make it nice and green; fertilizer is a number 1 source of pollution in streams. Where do you rinse your grease and oil from your driveway to? How many chemicals do you spray around your house, never considering the impact it makes on your tiny, but equally, if not more so, crucial neighbors?